


Harvester of Eyes

by GwendolynGrace



Category: Supernatural, The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Minor Violence, Sexual Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 10:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwendolynGrace/pseuds/GwendolynGrace
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John gets wind of a hunt that he doesn’t want the boys anywhere near. But taking them far from danger actually puts them in its path, when they stumble into an open doorway to the Dreaming. This fic takes place pre-series for Supernatural, post-series for Sandman (so spoilers there) (But you don’t need to be familiar with Sandman! Or Supernatural, for that matter.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an SPN-BOC challenge (LJ community, now defunct) and has taken on life of its own. It wound up being a nice even six chapters. Dean is 15 and Sam is 11, older than I imagined when I conceived this story, but that’s where it fits with the Sandman timeline. Also, it was written before we learned anything about Mary's family, or Sam and Dean's destiny, or angels, or the apocalypse. I have not made any adjustments for canon which may have jossed anything herein.
> 
> Thanks to my incomparable and invaluable beta Etakyma, who assured me that no, it wasn’t dragging and yes, the chapters are broken in the right places.
> 
> I have never been to Nebraska, Pueblo, CO, Wichita, KS, or any of the other places mentioned in this fic. I have no idea what the terrain or traffic is really like, where the red light districts are, or any of that stuff. Placenames, streets, and driving distances are based on GoogleMaps, with a healthy allowance for John’s lead foot at times. Also, I used a recording of "Harvester of Eyes" off iTunes, so I don’t have a good sense of the song in the context of its original album—I just used the music as I found it. Finally, this fic is further proof that all American subculture is predicated on familiarity with the film version of “The Wizard of Oz.”
> 
> Disclaimer: Supernatural and its characters belong to the CW and Eric Kripke. Sandman and its characters belong to DC Vertigo comics and Neil Gaiman. Discrepancies = mine.

_Harvester of eyes, that's me_  
_And I see all there is to see_  
_When I look inside your head_  
_Right up front to the back of your skull_

_Well that's my sign that you are dead_  
_And my list for you checks off as null_  
_I'm the harvester of eyes_

_I'm the eyeman of TV_  
_With my ocular TB_  
_I need all the peepers I can find_  
_Inside the barn where you find the hay_

_Well just last week I took a ride_  
_So high on eyes, I almost lost my way_  
_I'm the harvester of eyes_

_Harvester of eyes, that's me....harvester of eyes_  
_And I see all there is to see...harvester of eyes_  
_When I look inside your head....harvester of eyes_  
_Right up front to the back of your skull....harvester of eyes_

 

**Prologue: 1989**

John didn’t deal in serial killers, as a rule. He had heard there was a gathering in Georgia; the hunters had passed the word along, just so no one would go looking for a hunt in the area, steer clear until the storm blew over. No one was crazy enough to go after any of them, not when they were all together like that. So John focused his hunts on points north: Illinois, Iowa, even east toward New England. He wanted the boys to see at least one New England autumn.

About a week later, though, he heard the rumors. The grand-daddy of killers had been sighted at the “Cereal” convention. Sighted, and then…something had happened. Something no one could quite explain. The few people who talked afterward, the ones who now swore they’d never hurt anyone again, they’d said…said the Corinthian was nothing short of a nightmare come to life.

But whatever it was, the murderous trail went cold after that week. No more mysterious cases of young men, stripped to their underclothes, bound, found violated on hotel bathroom floors, their eyes carved out. No sign of the killer known as the Corinthian. 

Supernatural or not, he seemed to be gone. John breathed a little easier.

 

 **1: 1994**  
It had started again. As he looked over the pages of newsprint, sussing out a pattern to all the madness, John Winchester stared in disbelief. After four years amid sworn statements that the bastard was gone for good…another pair of victims had shown up. Boys, the elder of whom couldn’t be older than sixteen: Bound, stripped, multiply lacerated, and eyeless.

And only minutes away from their current squat in Colorado Springs.

John dialed the phone before he had time to think about it. When the gruff voice on the other end picked up, he said without preamble: “Caleb, ever hear of a sumbitch called the Corinthian?”

There was a pause. “Corinthian’s just a man, John,” Caleb said sadly. “A monster, certainly, but nothing unusual about that.”

“Not so sure,” John said. “Remember about five years ago? That mess down around Dodge County, Georgia?”

“The serial killer convention?” Caleb’s voice was full of disgust and disbelief.

“Yeah. All reports said that something otherwordly showed up, took that monster away.”

“Something sure happened there – none of the people anyone tracked into that place has ever killed anyone again,” Caleb conceded.

“Exactly my point, Caleb…. There’s an article in today’s _Pueblo Chieftain_. I think the Corinthian is back.”

There was a moment’s silence. “What?” Caleb said finally. “John, how can you…?”

“Same MO. Same choice of victims. Same mutilation. Caleb, it’s a hunch, but…after what happened in Dodge County, I think, if this thing is back to its old tricks, then it’s decidedly not human.”

“Okay,” Caleb said slowly. “What do you figure you need to hunt it?”

“Need to do more research on that. But Caleb, it goes after teenage boys.” He paused, wondering if Caleb would make him ask outright.

“So it’s not weapons you need right now,” Caleb’s voice came out sympathetic. “You want Sam and Dean out of the area.”

“Hell, yes. From everything I’ve seen about this…thing…they’d make prime targets.”

Caleb sucked air between his teeth before answering. “John, if you bring them here…what if the trail goes cold?”

“I’ll worry about that later. The latest murder…we’re only 45 miles away from where it happened.” John fought to keep his fear out of his voice.

“Okay,” Caleb said quickly. “Okay. I’ll see what I can find out as far as ordnance for you, have it by the time you get here. When will that be?”

“I want to check it out now, while it’s hot, but then we’ll pull out soon as I get back. Probably see you in the small hours?”

“I’ll get the spare room ready. John?” His voice in the receiver made John pull it back from halfway to the cradle.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t do anything stupid.”

“Yeah.” John half-laughed and hung up.

Across the room, Dean’s foot kicked aside the coverlet and an arm flung itself free from under the pillow. Next to him in the bed was a tight ball around which the covers had been tucked, except for a tuft of black, unruly hair that poked out near the headboard. The pillow was nowhere in sight. John crossed to the bed and tapped Dean’s visible foot. 

“Dean.”

Dean blinked groggily. “Dad?”

“Goin’ out for a couple hours. Under no circumstances are you and Sammy to leave this room. Got that? Not even for ice or a soda.”

“Okay…. Time is it?”

“Not quite six. I should be back by ten. Nowhere, and don’t let anyone in. But I want you two up and ready to go when I get back. Got it?”

“Yes, sir,” Dean said with a nod. He burrowed back into the pillows and was snoring lightly seconds later.

John rolled his eyes. He probably hadn’t even needed to wake Dean to tell him not to go anywhere. At eleven and fifteen, his sons never seemed to be able to get enough food or sleep. They probably wouldn’t move from the bed while he was gone. But on the off-chance that they did bestir themselves, he didn’t want them wandering around with that killer potentially nearby.

Pulling the door shut behind him, John made his way to the car. He had already drunk some coffee from the four-cup pot in the room, but he stopped at a drive-through on the way out of town for a fresh cup. He figured if he could get down there in an hour, look around a bit at the scene, maybe pick up some feel for how this creature operated, then get back in time to shunt the boys over to Caleb….he might at least have some idea where to start looking when he came back.

He made good time to Pueblo, arriving in forty minutes instead of the hour he’d budgeted. It helped that he hadn’t had to go into town to reach the scene of the murders. But the motel was awash with a clean-up crew when he arrived, carpets to curtains, and they’d obliterated any evidence he might have been able to view. He tried to bluff his way in to take some EMF readings, but was told that “all his buddies” from the CSI unit were already gone. The motel owner insisted that they had cleared the scene before they left and told him he could go ahead and fix it back up. “Yeah, they came in about 4:00 yesterday afternoon. Crawled around here for hours – and that’s my main check-in zone, y’know? But this morning they said they were all done. Guess you didn’t get that bulletin, did you?” He seemed solely interested in getting the room scrubbed clean, as if he’d be able to rent it that night if he could just wipe it down enough.

John interviewed some of the other guests, the few who were moving around at 7:00 AM and who’d been around two days ago, but they said they’d heard nothing other than what might have been rough sex. A couple vaguely remembered the guy – average height, blond, sunglasses – and said he was wearing a white t-shirt and jeans. The clerk and a trucker added a leather jacket and a few inches to the description. All agreed that he’d looked confident and personable, smiling. No, he never removed the shades. No, they hadn’t seen him come back with the boys he’d killed. But the motel was one of those with card-access side doors, so maybe he hadn’t come through the main foyer. No one had seen him leave, either. 

The police reports would take a day or two to be filed. John’s article hadn’t identified the victims – probably waiting to notify the families. If they had families. The rest could wait until he returned. His stomach was rumbling, and not just with hunger. Every minute he left Dean and Sam alone, he could feel his unease growing. John saddled back up, hit another drive-through for a quick breakfast burrito/sandwich/muffin thingie, and zipped back to Colorado Springs in only thirty-five minutes.

…Where he found the scene in the motel room exactly as he had left it. The only difference was that Sam’s foot hung over the edge of the bed and Dean had flipped onto his stomach, one arm behind his back, the other tucked under his head. His feet had found their way under the covers again. 

John didn’t know whether to scream or laugh. On the one hand, he was relieved that Dean had obeyed orders and hadn’t left the room. On the other, Dean hadn’t done exactly was he was told; neither he nor Sam could be remotely described as “ready to roll.” Then again, John had said himself that they probably wouldn’t move while he was gone. He should have known better than to tell Dean to sleep in without setting an alarm. _Count your blessings, John,_ he told himself. _No harm, no foul._ Though it seemed Dean would need a talking to about following orders to the letter. Later. When he was awake enough to appreciate it. He stood over his eldest son and shook his shoulder.

“C’mon, Dean. Up!” he said, commandingly but not loud. He walked around the bed. “Sammy, time to get up,” he continued, yanking on that foot. Both boys groaned and repositioned themselves. Obviously, neither of them minded sleeping in for the extra couple hours.

“Boys!” John said, definitely in the vicinity of loud this time, pulling back the comforter. “Dean, I thought I told you I wanted you up and ready to go by the time I got back.”

“Kay,” Dean said. “You go, we’ll be here.” He grabbed the covers and tucked them around himself.

John sighed. Clearly, Dean hadn’t woken up enough before to realize John had already left once. He looked at the clock. It was 9:25, which all things considered wasn’t so bad. He’d been figuring more time for his preliminary investigation, so technically, they were ahead. But not by much, and there was nothing wrong with bugging out ahead of schedule, either. The sooner, the better, in fact. “Dean. Sammy. Time. To Get. Up.” He snatched the covers away and dumped them on the other bed.

“Nnnn,” Sammy said, burrowing into his pillow, which was somehow underneath his chest, half head-rest, half teddy bear.

“Come on, boys, we’re wasting daylight. Need you to shower, change, and get ready to move out within the hour.”

“Wha…breakfast?” Dean said, turning over on his side and only managing to get half his question out. That was his Dean: when he wasn’t asleep, he was hungry.

“We’ll eat on the road. UP!” John ordered, at a decibel level just next door to bellowing.

Dean sniffed and cracked an eye open. “Sammy, you can shower first,” he offered, and pushed his foot backward until it connected with his brother’s leg. He kept applying pressure until both Sammy’s legs hung over the edge of the mattress.

“Nnnnn!” Sammy whined, but it was too late. Dean had worked his way up to Sammy’s butt, and gravity did the rest. Sammy slid out of the bed, landing on his knees, nose against the mattress. “Mmf,” he said into the spring coils. “Dean! Gonna kill you!” he continued as he sat up, looking around sleepily.

“Kill me…after you shower, man,” Dean said, rolling over. He promptly spread out to splay himself across the whole bed with a deep sigh.

“Man, this blows,” Sammy commented, but he pulled a fresh pair of underwear out of his duffel and banged through the room to the compact bathroom, shutting the door a little too forcefully. John flicked on the TV to check the weather, and to cover the noise of his son’s morning routine. Dean was snoring lightly again, but John figured the steady rhythm of the TV announcers would help revive him.

“One of these days, Sammy’s gonna push _you_ out of bed,” John said to his sleeping teenager.

“Been there, done that,” came a groggy response. “I’ve finally taught him _not_ to kick at night.” Dean pushed himself up on his hands and twisted to sit against the headboard. “Dad, are we _ever_ gonna start getting a cot? Two rooms? Something so I don’t have to share a bed?”

John sighed. “Well, you won’t have to share for a while, anyway. Taking you to Caleb’s for a bit.”

Dean frowned. “Caleb’s? He’s hours away. What’s the hunt?”

“Nothing you need to know about,” John said gruffly.

“Kay,” Dean said, brushing off his father’s terse smack-down. He swung his legs out of the bed and stretched, yawning. Then he rummaged for a pair of jeans. “Continental breakfast goes ’til 10. Wanna mini-muffin?”

“No. We’ll eat on the road,” John repeated. “I don’t want you or Sammy going out of the room alone.”

“Not even for a Coke? Dad—”

“I said no. You’ll just have to wait.” John folded the newspaper and shoved it into his journal. “Drink water if you’re thirsty. Sounds like Sam’s done in the shower.”

Dean went to the low dresser and pulled the plastic wrap off a Styrofoam cup. A little of his dad’s coffee was still in the pot—stone cold, but still. “How about coffee?”

“No way, dude,” John said with a smile. “Last time I let you drink coffee added two hours to the trip. Had to stop at every gas station on route 54. You can live without caffeine for a little while longer.”

“No he can’t,” Sammy said, emerging from the bathroom amid a cloud of steam. He had changed into the shorts and was scrubbing his hair with the towel. “Got the shakes yet, Dean?”

“Shut up,” Dean told his brother, grabbing the towel and smooshing it against Sam’s scalp in a makeshift noogie. “And put some clothes on!” Dean disappeared into the bathroom.

“Dean’s crazy,” Sammy observed.

“No, he’s fifteen,” John said, suppressing the pang of _And how did_ that _happen?_ that sometimes hit him when he contemplated the boys’ growth.

“Same thing,” Sammy said. He pulled socks and a t-shirt out from his bag. His jeans were balled up in a chair; he shook them out and shoved his legs through the openings, zipped and buttoned up, and sat to pull on the socks. “Seriously, Dad, I think Dean’s got himself a full-on addiction. Maybe he needs intervention. We could get him on Sally Jesse Raphael.”

“Don’t worry about your brother,” John told his youngest, trying not to smile at Dean’s expense.

“Easy for you to say, Dad. You’re not the one he’ll rabbit-punch until we get to the nearest diner.”

“Practice blocking,” John told him absently. “Anyway, we need to get moving. I want to get most of the way tonight so I can make it back again tomorrow.”

“You’re coming right back here?” Sammy asked. “Then where are _we_ going?”

“Caleb’s gonna look after you and Dean for a bit.”

“But…Dad, if your hunt’s here, why not just stay here? We can stay in the room if you don’t want us along.”

“Sammy, this is not a discussion. You’re going to stay with Caleb. He’s expecting us. Now pack your damn bag.” John’s hands twitched into fists. Lord, he was tense. He wanted to get the boys away from the Corinthian’s chosen hunting ground, and fast.

“We’re not babies,” Sam insisted. “It’s dumb to drive all the way to Lincoln just to come back here.”

“Sam,” John bit out, going to the coffee pot for the last cold half-cup. “I said this is not up for discussion.”

Sammy’s face darkened, but he pulled his lips in tight to each other and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” John jabbed a finger at Sam’s open duffel. “Pack. Now.”

Dean came out of the bathroom a minute later and within five more was dressed and ready to ship out. John hadn’t even finished packing up yet. Dean held out his hand for the keys, which John ignored.

“Ready, Sammy?” John prodded. He snapped off the TV. “Got all your stuff?”

Sammy went back into the bathroom and emerged ten seconds later with his toothbrush, pajamas, and a comb that clearly hadn’t been anywhere near his hair. He shoved them into his bag. “Ready,” he mumbled.

John took a last check of the room while Dean bounced his knee impatiently. “Okay. We go straight to the car, understand? No running ahead, no excursions to the buffet. Got it?”

“Yessir,” came the familiar duet.

“Let’s go.”

They hit a diner on North Platte before heading across Route 94. John wasn’t taking any chances and wouldn’t let the boys out of his sight until they were well into Kansas. They stopped to stretch between Sharon Springs and Winona. Ordinarily, John made sure that even while traveling, they all got adequate exercise. He had planned to skip their workout today, speed being essential in his mind: get the boys out, get back to Pueblo. Maybe John was lulled by the brightness of the sky, or his scan of the horizon reassured him that they were utterly, completely alone, or he just couldn’t stay cooped up in the sticky Impala with his sons getting more and more antsy, but he pulled the car over and set them all a quick three-mile run. Pleased with the boys’ performance, John rewarded them with a brief stopover at the Dairy Queen in Winona for blizzards.

After that, he got more worried about the time. They hit the road in a serious way. Dean was itching to drive, so once they hit Route 36, John let him take the wheel for a couple hours. With a reminder not to speed, John leaned back in the passenger seat and caught up on sleep lost to pick up all the local papers when they hit the shelves, scanning for possible jobs and always, always, any sign of the bastard that killed Mary.

When he woke, he realized the car wasn’t moving. He could smell the fumes through the open window; saw the canopy of a gas station through the windshield. He sat up, scrubbing his face to wipe the sand from his eyes. A quick glance around showed Sammy asleep in the back; Dean stood behind the car with his hand on the gas pump. He checked his watch: late afternoon, and plenty of daylight left. He climbed out just as Dean popped the pump out from under the license plate. 

“See if Sammy needs the bathroom,” John told Dean. He waited while Dean ducked in the back and shook Sammy awake. Then the three went inside, took turns in the single men’s room, and John let them get sodas and some sandwiches to add to the gas tab.

He pushed them all the way to Beatrice before stopping for a last bathroom break, then settled in for the final leg to Caleb’s. 

Caleb lived on a strip of road east of town; nothing but farms all around. On a clear day, he could see a car coming a good ten minutes before it got to him, gauging the distance by the size of its dust cloud. The porch light was on when John pulled up the long driveway. Caleb opened the door as John was waking up the boys.

“You weren’t kidding about the small hours,” Caleb said. “There’s fuck-all on this time of night. You know how boring it is to watch reruns of old White Sox games?”

John grinned. He opened the trunk and Sam and Dean each grabbed their own bags. “You were asleep until you heard the car, weren’t you?”

Caleb laughed. “Question is, are you gonna get some shut-eye before you turn right around?”

Dean, who was halfway across Caleb’s porch, turned to gape at his father. Sam merely shook his head and pushed past Caleb, muttering, “Stupid” under his breath.

“You’re going right back there, Dad?” Dean asked.

John shot Caleb a look as if to say, “Thanks a lot” before saying to Dean, “You got a problem, son?”

Dean swallowed and shook his head. “No, no problem, sir.”

“Good.”

Caleb cleared his throat. “Go on in, boys. You know where the spare room is.” John still hadn’t moved onto the porch. “You comin’, John?”

John hesitated a moment, as if he were contemplating just sitting back down at the wheel and putting a few miles in before leaving. “Yeah, it’s too late to start back tonight,” he admitted. He climbed the steps and followed Caleb inside. “If I take the interstates, I can make it back there by mid-afternoon. Weather permitting,” he added wearily. There’d been something on the TV about a storm front.

“Well, I did find some information for you,” Caleb offered. “And some arms, might help you out. Want a beer? Or are you ready to crash?”

“Beer’d be good,” John said gratefully.

~*~*~*~

Dean dropped his duffel on the narrow bed closer to the door. Sammy was already shucking his shoes and jacket.

“Sam, you know anything about what Dad’s doing?” Dean asked suspiciously.

“Just that he brought us all the way out here and he’s going right back,” Sam said, making no effort to hide his derision for their father’s logic.

Dean thought about this for a bit. Sam was right; it was jacked of their father to make a 1,200-mile round trip just to dump them on Caleb, but it was far from the strangest thing he had ever done. He shrugged.

“He’s gotta have his reasons, Sammy.”

“Like what?” Sam retorted.

“Fu—Hell if I know,” Dean shot back. “Anyways, it’s not so bad, is it? I like Caleb.”

“You like him because he lets you clean the guns, and he swears, and he doesn’t give us a curfew like Pastor Jim.”

“Duh,” Dean said, pulling off his jeans, “and because he doesn’t care what we watch on TV, even the porn. C’mon, Sammy, Caleb helped me make my first fake ID—hard not to like a guy that cool.”

Sam rolled his eyes. Muttering “Whatever,” he pushed his way out, claiming first crack at the bathroom. Dean sat on “his” bed, looking around at the familiar room, wondering what his father had cooking that required him and Sam to be out of the way. He laid down to rest his head while Sam brushed his teeth. He could hear his dad and Caleb talking in the kitchen, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. Maybe when he got up to use the bathroom, he could eavesdrop, just a little. He’d do that, he decided…as soon as Sammy got back…. 

Though he dimly heard Sam come in, settle into bed, Dean fell asleep before he could take his turn and put his plan into action.


	2. Chapter 2

Of all their father’s friends, Dean knew Sam liked Bobby Singer about the best, mostly because while the man looked all redneck, he was really all bookworm. Bobby and Sam could talk for hours about books. He could also talk to Dean for hours about cars, but once Dean realized that Sam loved getting the extra attention from Bobby, Dean backed off on the whole auto shop thing, relying instead on Bobby’s manuals and his father’s sporadic influence to teach him. He had already begun rating his high schools more favorably based on whether he could take shop.

They both loved Pastor Jim, of course, the man probably most like a surrogate father to them. But Pastor Jim, cool as he was, was still a preacher, and Dean had felt distinctly uncomfortable on their last couple trips to Blue Earth, surrounded by Pastor Jim’s quiet faith.

Jefferson was a cagey coot who smelled of boiled cabbage and mothballs. Neither Sam nor Dean liked him much, but that was okay, as they only rarely saw Jefferson, living as he did right up on the B.C. border. They’d never even met Joshua – just a name on a page, a voice on the phone, far as they knew. There were others, but their dad being their dad, some of them would just as likely shoot on sight as give them shelter.

Caleb was by far Dean’s favorite friend of Dad’s. The last time they’d visited, Caleb had taken Dean with him into town twice, letting him pick up some pool lessons from guys who’d have given Dean’s dad a run for his money, and gave him his first (don’t tell Dad) beer. When his friend Roxie asked about his “nephew,” Caleb had laughed and told Dean that he had better be careful not to find himself alone with her, or, as he put it, “I’ll have to answer to John for more than I can afford.” Roxie had laughed then, too, and so had Dean, though at the time he hadn’t been entirely sure why they all thought it was so funny. The point was that Caleb treated Dean more like an adult than any of his dad’s other friends, even more than Dad, whose assessment of Dean’s maturity often seemed to be limited to how well he could take care of Sam. Caleb knew they could leave Sam to his own devices and he’d be fine. Dean felt himself relax around Caleb, like he didn’t have to be quite so constantly on duty.

So Dean was looking forward to the visit, even if he was anxious about why they were here. When he woke, it was to bright morning light, and he knew before he even got out of bed that his father was probably long gone, and any explanation along with him. Caleb would talk to him about lots of things – weapons, movies, hell, even girls – but he’d clam up about Dean’s dad tighter than Fort Knox if Dad didn’t want him saying anything.

His bladder was yelling at him for not seeing to it the night before, so he swung out of bed with one glance at Sam, still dead to the world and only the top of his head showing. His teeth felt furry, another sign that he should have stayed awake long enough to take care of business. Moreover, then he might have overheard something about his father’s hunt, which also would have been useful. “Fuck me,” he breathed, smiling at his brazen freedom. Caleb really didn’t care what kind of mouth Dean had, and that was a rare treat, since Dad would have tanned him for anything worse than the occasional “Hell,” “Bitch,” or “Piss.” He couldn’t quite figure out Dad’s filing system for swearing, like why “Shit” was somehow unacceptable but “Crap” was okay, but he knew that “Fuck” was definitely in the Not Allowed camp. And he knew, too, that it was one of Caleb’s favorite cusses. Yet another reason to look forward to staying, Dean thought as he crept into the hallway in search of the toilet.

“Dean?” Caleb called from the kitchen, tone indicating verification, nothing more.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Sam up yet, too?”

“Nope,” Dean said, and ducked into the bathroom.

He bustled back to the guest room for his kit, then back to the bathroom to clean himself up. While brushing his teeth, Dean peered into the mirror, closely examining his reflection for any sign of whiskers. His jaw remained smooth. He cursed at it for practice. Becky Languedoc had told him that most girls had really fine hair before they started shaving their legs, and that afterward, they had to keep shaving because the hair grew back coarser, heavier, and darker. He wondered if he should start shaving, even if there wasn’t anything to shave, to see if that would make his beard grow in sooner. He couldn’t yet pull off an over-21 ID, but maybe if he had a little stubble….

Sam pounded on the bathroom door. “Hurry up, Barbie!”

“Shup, bitch,” Dean said, backing away from the mirror in a hurry, glad that Sam couldn’t see him blush. How long had he been in here, anyway?

“I mean it, Dean, I gotta go!” Sam called.

“Okay,” Dean told his brother. He unlocked the door and leaned against it when Sam tried to turn the knob. The door bucked against Dean’s back, but then shut again. Dean laughed. “Poor Sammy. Hey, would it help if I ran some water for you out there?” Sam rattled the doorknob and tried shoving all his weight against the door, but it still held. “Maybe next time you’ll think twice about calling me a girl.”

“You’re such a jerk,” Sammy whined. He pushed on the door again, and Dean held it closed. Sam’s battering ceased. “Fine, stay in there,” Sammy said. “Caleb’s making waffles, so, more for me. I’ll just pee on your bed.” 

Dean opened the door. “Don’t you dare!” Sam ducked under his arm and glared at him to get out. “Try to aim into the bowl, this time, Samantha,” he said over his shoulder as Sam shut the door on him.

“Jerk!” he heard through the door.

Dean grinned. “Say it like you mean it, Sammy,” he taunted, but once outside the bathroom, he could smell the waffles grilling. He drifted down the hall to Caleb’s kitchen.

“Hey, kiddo,” Caleb said absently. “Pour the OJ, will ya?”

“Got it,” Dean answered. He sidled past Caleb to pull glasses out of the cupboard, went to the fridge for the carton of juice.

“So,” Caleb continued. “Got plans for the day?”

Dean smiled. None of Dad’s other friends would have even asked like that. “Not really. Anything you need help with?”

“Maybe,” Caleb told him. He opened the iron and flipped a perfect waffle onto a plate already piled with the grilled pastries, then stuck the plate back in the oven to keep them hot. As he scraped batter from the bowl into the iron, he said, “Got a shipment needs…calibrating. Also got something Sam might like – new computer. New to me, anyway. Got it to keep a better catalog for the business. Thought maybe he could help me figure it out.”

“Sure,” Dean offered. “Sam’s had a couple computer classes already.”

“How about you?”

Dean shrugged. “They’re okay. Video games are better.” His eyes slid sideways to gauge Caleb’s reaction.

“Video games?” Caleb said quietly. “Good thing I still have that old Atari set.”

“Sweet,” Dean observed. “Frogger?” Sam liked Frogger – it was one of the few they could both play equally well.

Caleb grunted in the affirmative.

~*~*~*~

It rained that day, but none of them minded. After breakfast, they all went down to the weapons locker. Sam switched on the tiny Macintosh, its grey screen reflecting in his wide eyes, while Caleb showed Dean a whole assortment of handguns and gave him a file. Dean scraped away serial numbers while Sam tapped the keys and helped Caleb set up a spreadsheet for his new acquisitions and old customers. They stopped for a lunch of grilled cheese and bacon sandwiches with tomato soup, watching the rain bands through the windows of Caleb’s farmhouse. Caleb flicked on the TV, but got only snow.

Caleb came to the window. Outside the sky was dark and the wind was kicking up fiercely. Dark green clouds hung low against the Lincoln skyline. “Sam, there’s a weather band radio in the closet. Get it out, would you?”

Dean joined him, looking out at the horizon. “What is it?” he asked.

“Storm front don’t look right. And with the signal out…I don’t like it.”

Sam came back into the living room with the portable radio. Caleb snicked it on and fiddled with the aerial for reception. Amid a lot of hiss and whine, they heard the announcer calmly stating that a tornado warning was in effect for Lancaster County. They all listened to the report until it cycled through to the beginning and all the way through again.

“Is Dad driving through that?” Sam asked gravely.

“Naw,” Caleb answered. “He mentioned the weather – I’m sure he either ducked south to avoid it, or he holed up somewhere to wait it out.”

Dean slapped his brother’s arm. “Yeah, Sammy. Don’t be such a worry-wart. Dad’s fine.” Sam countered with an attempt to hook his leg around Dean’s knee, but Dean threw him to the couch and pinned his arms.

“Watch the table,” Caleb said absently. “Come on, boys, let’s batten the hatches and head back down. Basement’s the best place to be while this blows over.”

Once downstairs, Caleb pulled out an old boom box and some cassettes, mostly what Sam would have called “Dean’s music.” Dean leafed through the tapes. “All right!” he exclaimed, holding up a Blue Öyster Cult cassette. “Hey, Sammy, this one has your favorite song on it,” he teased.

Sam glared, but went back to transferring Caleb’s hand-written ledger into AppleWorks.

“You like BÖC, Sam?” Caleb asked, confused. Maybe Sam’s tastes had changed, but he had confessed once to Caleb that he didn’t really like hard rock.

“Dean’s a dipshit,” Sam answered, as Dean put the cassette in and started fiddling with the fast-forward. 

“Whoa, Sammich,” Dean said through a laugh. “Strong language, there, baby-cakes.”

“Shup, Dean, I’m not a baby!”

“Okay, okay,” Caleb said quickly, holding up a hand to stave off the snark-fest. Last thing he needed was two adolescent boys whining at each other in the confines of a basement-turned-armory. “Sam, how’re you doing with that list?”

Dean hit “Play,” found his place on the cassette, and backed up a little. When he hit “Play” again, a track was just fading out. Into the dead space a guitar vamp started up, like a heartbeat, a fast rhythm over which the bass, lead guitar, and drums came in. 

“Not funny, Dean,” Sam muttered when the lyric began. Dean snickered and sang a snatch of it under his breath.

“‘ _When I look inside your head / Right up front to the back of your skull…._ ’”

Caleb leaned over Sam’s shoulder. “You okay?” he whispered, seeing Sam turning a little green.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sam told him defiantly. He was anything but fine, but Caleb didn’t argue. He shrugged and let Sam concentrate on the computer.

Dean hummed along happily, wiping the file with a rag and picking up a firearm to scrape away at its etching. As the song drew to its close, the playout slowed and a nickelodeon picked up.

“Here it is, Sammy!” Dean beamed at him. “Your favorite part!”

Sam gritted his teeth. “You suck, Dean.”

“I love you too, Sam-I-Am,” Dean said with false sweetness. “See, Caleb, Sam’s afraid of—”

“Shuddup, Dean!” Sam cried.

“Clowns,” Dean finished smugly. “It’s pretty pathetic. This right there?” he continued, pointing to the boom box where the music box waltz played out, “Reminds him of the circus. You know? Dad made me get rid of the tape, you believe that? Jeez, boy can’t even go near an ice cream truck, gives him the shudders.”

“Shut up, Dean!” Sam shouted again, cheeks burning now. He stomped up the stairs.

“Sam!” Caleb called after him. Boy had enough sense to come right back if it wasn’t clear up there, but he went after him to make sure. Sam was standing in the threshold of the living room, where he could see out the window. The sky had turned dark yellow with rain, but there was no sign of a twister.

“Leave me alone,” Sam said when he saw Caleb, and slammed into the guest room, shutting the door behind him.

Caleb sighed. He hoped like hell John got somewhere with this hunt, because he sure had better things to do than referee these two when they were like this. He went to the fridge to get himself a beer before going back downstairs to talk to Dean.

“Is Sam okay?” Dean asked as soon as he saw Caleb’s boots on the steps. The basement was silent; he had turned off the cassette.

“He’s upset,” Caleb told him, making no effort to hide his own disappointment. “Dean, what’s got into you?”

Dean shrugged and turned back to his task.

“I know you two are brothers, and you get in each other’s way sometimes,” Caleb told him, picking up the list Sam had been working on. “But that’s no excuse to shame him in front of someone else.”

Dean hunched over the weapon in his hands. “Yeah, I know,” he said finally, and his voice was thick. “I didn’t think it’d bother him that much,” he admitted.

“Huh,” Caleb said, unconvinced. He left it there, realizing that no additional lecturing was needed. Caleb went over to the player for something else to put in, and saw that Dean had smashed the tape. He let that go unremarked, too. Instead, he selected a nice, tame Beatles album and popped it in without comment.

Dean filed down all the numbers, brushed the barrels clean, and smoothed down the guns with graphite before stowing them back in the weapons racks. He hadn’t uttered a sound in over an hour, not even to hum along to “Eleanor Rigby.” “M’gonna check on Sam,” he mumbled to Caleb and shuffled upstairs without waiting for an answer.

~*~*~*~

Their door was shut, so Dean knocked.

“Go away,” Sam said from inside.

“Sammy….”

“Go away!”

Dean leaned his forehead on the door. “Sammy, I’m playing Frogger. Wanna play?”

No response. Dean went to the hall closet and dug around for the Atari set. He glanced out the front windows. The sky had cleared up, but it looked like there’d been some heavy winds, because someone’s deck chair had blown into the front yard. He hadn’t wanted to say anything with Sam doing the worrying for them both, but the thought of his father driving through that kind of weather, into a hunt of unknown duration or danger, did unsettle him a bit.

Dean hooked up the player and tried the TV. It was still snowy, so the transmitter was probably still out. He switched to channel three, popped the game into the slot, and selected a one-player game with a sigh.

He played a level, then turned the sound way up and played the second level. He hoped the sound would draw Sam out, but Sammy either still couldn’t hear or didn’t care to join him. He kamikazed his frog, making it hop directly into the path of the oncoming traffic. When the game beeped sadly to inform him, “Game Over,” he set down the joystick and turned off the TV. He drifted back to the guest room door.

“Sam?”

Sam didn’t answer, but Dean could hear the bedsprings creak. He opened the door quietly. “Sam, I’m…sorry,” he mumbled. He couldn’t explain to Sam, any better than he could to Caleb, why he wanted to rib Sam at that moment. He’d felt uneasy all day, and not just because of the weather. Sam had just gotten in the path of his nerves. “I guess I’m just a little on edge. Okay?”

Sam was reading pointedly, but he snorted at Dean’s explanation. Dean shuffled closer to the bed. “You always read upside-down?” he asked, when he could see the cover of Sam’s heavy book.

“Yes,” Sam answered, but his mouth twitched. “You’re an asshole, Dean,” he said solemnly.

“I know,” Dean agreed, nodding. He sat down on Sam’s bed and Sam curled up his legs to make room for him. “Look—”

He didn’t get to say anything more, because Sam launched himself and caught Dean around the neck from behind. He trapped Dean’s head with one arm and began to rub his knuckles vigorously against Dean’s scalp with his free hand. “Noogies!” Sam yelled. Dean twisted instinctively, pulling his brother over. They rolled across the bed, Sam’s book forgotten. Sam wrapped his legs around Dean’s middle. Dean countered by sliding off the bed, through the circle of Sam’s legs. Sam clung to Dean as they went down, repositioning an arm to catch Dean’s in a half-nelson. Dean got to his knees and Sam stood, but Dean ducked forward and threw Sam over his shoulder onto the floor. Laughing, Sam rolled away and bounced up onto his toes. By then, Dean had also got to his feet. Sam came at him, but Dean put a hand firmly on his forehead and locked his elbow to keep Sam at arm’s length. Sam turned away easily, dancing inside Dean’s range. He hooked an ankle around Dean’s leg and yanked back, so that Dean fell on his back onto his own bed. Sam pressed his advantage, jumping on Dean, but Dean reached up over his head and grabbed the pillow. He cocked Sam hard in the face with the fluffy weapon. Sam grabbed it away and hit back, and Dean caught him around the torso and started tickling. Sam shrieked, kicked, and tickled back. At length, both paused to breathe, Dean lying against the wall, Sam leaning against his brother’s chest.

“Truce?” Dean asked with a sigh of contentment.

“Truce. Only….” Sam said.

“Yeah, Sammy, I won’t.”

Sam didn’t get up right away. He picked up the pillow and hugged it. Dean closed his eyes, drifting with early evening, post-sparring drowsiness. Sam’s head was warm and heavy and solid against Dean’s chest. “Dean?”

“Mm?”

“Why d’you think Dad brought us here before going back to that hunt?” Sam’s voice fairly surged with worry. Dean tensed, but forced himself to relax so Sam wouldn’t feel him seize up at the question.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Dean admitted. “But I don’t like any of the reasons I can think of.”

“Like…he doesn’t want us around?” Sam asked.

Dean squeezed Sam reassuringly. “Yeah, but…not in a bad way, I don’t think. I mean, I think…it’s because he’s after something dangerous. Really dangerous, not just a regular ghost, I mean. And maybe…he wants to make sure we’re nowhere near it. Remember that wendigo up in Seney? He dropped us off with Pastor Jim for that.”

“Yeah…” Sam said, and his voice sounded very small.

“Hey, come on,” Dean told him, jostling his arm, “Dad’ll be fine. And it’s not…it’s not that he doesn’t want us around,” Dean said, clearing his throat to keep his voice from cracking. “It’s just…I guess he doesn’t want us to get hurt.” He pushed up on Sam’s shoulder and Sam sat up willingly. “Kick your ass at Gauntlet?” he offered.

“Nah,” Sammy answered. “Let’s ask Caleb if we can make bullets.”

~*~*~*~

Over the next week, though there were at least three other major storm systems, Dean and Sam spent as much time as possible outdoors. They ran, when they could, their usual route along Holdredge, north at one of the junctions before they came too close to Eagle, and looping back around to Havelock at some point. Each run put in three, five, even ten miles depending on the weather. Dean was pleased to see that Sam remembered the routes as well as he did.

The second storm front moved through on Saturday. Afterward, on Caleb’s instruction, they went to the next farm north, where Mrs. Andrews lived, and repaired her fence. She let them borrow the bikes that had belonged to her boys, before they got married and moved away. They had to cut their bike ride short, due to more high winds in the area. The next day, Dean spied a cyclone in the distance, while they were out behind Caleb’s house, sparring. They came inside to learn that a tornado had hit Denton, just a few miles to their southwest. Caleb also told them that their father had called.

“He’s okay,” Caleb reported. “Just focused on his hunt. He was worried about all the storms here, though.” Dean waited to hear what his father had to say about his and Sam’s fight on Thursday, but Caleb said nothing more. Maybe Caleb hadn’t told Dad - which was, in his opinion, just another reason for Caleb to be his favorite.

On Monday, they went running with Caleb, and got caught in a rainstorm, laughing all the way back to the house, soaked and steaming from the humidity. Tuesday, they were back to going on their own. “East only,” Caleb reminded them (as always). “No going into town. Be back in two hours, right?” 

When it rained, they helped Caleb with the weapons and made bullets and worked on Caleb’s ID factory. Every day when it wasn’t raining, they went out for target practice in the back. 

The storm that moved through on Tuesday night was about as impressive as the one their first day there. Caleb woke them in the middle of the night and moved them to the basement. They could hear thunder all around, but the house survived. 

The next day Dean told Caleb they were going out for a run. “Weather report says it should be clear until at least four.”

“East only,” Caleb said, “and come back if the sky gets dark, right? If it goes green, get to shelter.”

“Okay,” Dean agreed. He and Sam donned baseball caps to keep the sun off and clattered out of the house. Just for variety’s sake, Dean led them north first, to Havelock, before turning right.

He set an easy pace at first, but Sam trotted ahead, so he sped up to match his little brother. Sam pushed a little more and Dean again added some speed. They smiled at each other, wasting no breath on laughing, and as if an invisible signal passed between them, began their race in earnest. They ran over flat land and straight roads, Dean’s longer legs vying with Sam’s slightly better form, paying little attention to their distance or surroundings. The yellow fields beside them grew greener as they ran, and the black road turned to gravel, then dirt, then grass. The fence remained constant, barbed wire running along the side with slender posts every few yards.

“Hey,” Sammy said, slowing down. Dean’s speed took him several yards further. “Hey, Dean, hold up!” Sam shouted between heaving breaths. “Something’s wrong.”

Dean turned around, still trotting lightly backwards. “S’matter, Sam, you got a cramp?”

“No, not with me! Look around!” 

Dean stopped. He turned in a slow circle. “Where are the farms?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Sam said, nodding. “And look over there.” He pointed to his left, where the fields rolled away toward a sloping hill. 

“There aren’t any hills like that near Caleb’s,” Dean said. His voice held suspicion and worry, but no fear.

“Let’s go back,” Sam said. Dean agreed, quickly setting a canter to take them down the road in the other direction.

They ran along for a few minutes. Dean expected to see Caleb’s farmhouse on the horizon, but their racing must have taken them farther away than he’d thought.

Sam slowed. “Dean…” he called, pointing. The hill was on their left again.

“That’s…not possible,” Dean said. He pulled one of his jelly bracelets off his wrist and placed it on one of the fenceposts to his right. “Okay. Now we go back.” He put his arm around Sam’s shoulders to push him down the road. Sam twisted to look back at the bracelet, but Dean pushed his hands against Sam’s arms to get him going.

“Don’t look at it,” Dean whispered. He walked them quickly, but didn’t run. They followed the road toward Caleb’s house. After a few minutes, Dean noticed a fencepost on the right that had a small black line across it. They came closer…and Dean recognized his bracelet.

“Aw, crap,” Dean said.

“Dean…I think we should go to that hill. Maybe…we could see farther around,” Sam suggested.

“Okay…yeah. Good idea, Sammy,” Dean said. They struck off, away from the fence, leaving the bracelet so Dean would have some idea, when they came back to the road, of where they had left the path.

As they neared the hill, they could see a rickety, ramshackle house atop it. Something was moving in front of the house.

“Uh…Dean…?” Sam warned, his voice a little shaky.

Dean gulped. “Yeah, I see him,” he muttered. “Get behind me.”

Sam looked offended, but as the figure walked toward them, he gave a little ground. 

The stranger waved in a friendly enough way. He was smoking a cigarette and had a mop over one shoulder, balanced on the strap of his overalls. A plaid, short-sleeved work shirt and boots completed his ensemble. Well, that and his jack-o-lantern of a head.

“Hey, visitors!” the walking jack-o-lantern called out. “Not often I get dreamers out thisa way.” 

He stopped a few feet from them and puffed on his cigarette. Dean suddenly wished he’d tucked a knife into his running shorts. He spread his arms protectively and Sam hovered behind his elbow, ready to run. The thing looked like a scarecrow out of “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” Dean thought, with no eyes, just triangular holes in its pumpkin-head, and the cigarette hanging in the jagged gash that represented its mouth. Dean wondered exactly when they’d passed from Nebraska into Halloweentown. Or maybe Oz - because talking scarecrows weren’t as unsettling over the rainbow. He hoped.

The scarecrow-thing had evidently been sizing them up, too. Its mouth-hole gaped open, the cigarette simply resting as if held by antigravity. A gloved hand slapped its pumpkin, near the stem, at what Dean supposed was its forehead. “Wait a minute…youse’re awake! Oh, for the love a Mike! Youse ain’t s’posed ta be here if yer from the Waking World!” 

The thing pulled his cigarette out of his mouth and jabbed with it toward Dean’s face. In a broad Bronx accent, he complained about things like quality control, unwanted interruptions, and what in the name of his sweet Auntie Mame he was gonna do with two boys “what ain’t got no bizness trespassin’ in da Dreamin’,” whatever that meant.

“Uh…look, uh, sir,” Dean said quietly, politely, the way Dad had taught him to address anyone who might be a source of information, “we didn’t mean to trespass. Okay? We’re a little lost, I think, so if you’d just—”

“A little lost?” the creature repeated, laughing. “A little lost? No kiddin’ youse are a little lost. I thought I made it perfectly clear to His Lordship that we needed to shore da soft places up after that last storm, but noooooo, he’s got bedda tings ta do, don’t he?” He took a big long drag from his cigarette, dropped it in the grass, stamped it out with one foot, and immediately pulled out another smoke from his pocket. A match followed this, which he struck against the ridges of his pumpkin skull. After another long drag on the newly lit smoke, he said. “Well, come on, might as well get you back where you came from.” He turned his back and began to walk toward the house on the hill.

“We were on that road,” Sam said helpfully. He came out from behind Dean’s arm and took a step toward the stranger.

“Can’t get back that way, kiddo,” the jack-o-lantern man told him over his shoulder. “Ya can only get out by goin’ furda in. C’mon—I’m a busy guy, ya know, ain’t got all day to babysit two yoomans.” He kept talking as he walked away, muttering about how he was supposed to be mopping out a flood in the Forest of Petrification.

“Don’t you mean the Petrified Forest?” Sam asked.

“Sam, shut up,” Dean told him through clenched teeth.

The jack-o-lantern stopped and turned. “Now, if I’d’a meant dat, don’ ya tink I’d’a said dat? Yeesh, kids dese days. Youse comin’ or ain’cha?”

Dean looked back at the bottom of the hill. Somehow he could see the fencepost and his thin black wristband as clearly as if they were right next to him, but the vista between them and the road seemed as high as the view from El Capitán. Turning away, he slid an arm around his little brother’s shoulders and pulled them both along in the scarecrow’s wake.


	3. Chapter 3

All things considered, John wished he had kicked this job to someone else. Someone who could be a little more clinical about the whole thing. His hunt, which had started fairly cold due to delays, had grown decidedly weird. And for a man in his line of work, that was saying something. 

He had had to detour fairly far south to get around the storm, that first day. He tried calling Caleb to make sure things were okay, but the phones were out. Suppressing his unease about the boys’ safety, John finally reached Pueblo almost 48 hours after he had first arrived at the murder scene. Back protesting from having slept in the car, he climbed out at the police station to find out what he could from their reports.

He bluffed his way in courtesy of a rather impressionable young man on desk-duty, and his trusty fake FBI badge. An hour later, though, with the contents of the police investigation spread out on the table, he was left with two conclusions: first, that the thing that had killed those two boys had definitely been supernatural; and second, that there probably wasn’t much he could do to track it. There was no weapon, no prints. No physical evidence of an assailant at all. And that was really, really weird, because there had been signs that the killer had disturbed his own crime scene – smears through the blood trails, that kind of thing – but no trace of what had caused the disturbance. He did know the name of one of the victims (the other was still a John Doe), and the name of the ME (autopsy report pending). The computer trace on the credit card used to pay for the room was still pending, too. He wrote down the account number to run his own search without much hope of success. Unlike Woodward and Bernstein, he had never been that good at following money. Plus, he privately bet with himself, it was unlikely that the card led anywhere at all. Probably stolen, or on some kind of dummy account – or possibly had never been real to begin with. 

“Takes one to know one,” he muttered to himself. Since Melinda Barnes had taught him every trick she knew about credit card fraud eight years earlier, he had been perfecting the art. Under different circumstances, John could possibly have called her, asked for help—but that door had been slammed in his face a long time ago. 

He took one last look at the files and then, with a sigh, replaced each item back in the cardboard file box in neat little piles. He closed up the box, tapped on the locker frame to let the duty officer know he was all set, and headed to the ME’s office to bluff his way in for the autopsy results.

Unfortunately, the real FBI got there first. John pulled up short in the corridor at the sight of two agents talking with the coroner. He ducked his head, looking for the nearest men’s room, water fountain – hell, anything to buy himself a little regrouping time. There was a drinking fountain back down the hall a bit. He leaned over it, and as he rose, he plunged a hand into his jacket breast pocket. The little notebook and pencil were still there. Reporter, then.

He waited until the Feds were on their way, pulling out the page of scribbled notes from the police report for reference. Then, swaggering a little with the air of one who is entitled to barge in, he pushed through the double-doors to where the doctor had just been interviewed.

“Excuse me, Dr. Gillis?” he asked brightly. “John Inchingham, _Colorado Springs Gazette_ ,” he continued when the beleaguered doctor nodded. “Might you have a few moments to answer some background questions on the, er…” he consulted his notepad, “Martins case?” 

The doctor sighed. “Buddy, I just told the FBI everything I know, and they said I’m done giving interviews.”

John raised his eyebrows. “They were FBI?” he asked, pointing back at the entrance. “Huh. Well, what would make the FBI interested in a case like this, do you think?”

“Beats me,” Dr. Gillis said with a shrug. “Unless you consider that the sick bastard who did this took their eyes with him—something I begged you people to keep out of the papers two days ago,” he added testily.

“That wasn’t me, that was the _Chieftain_ ,” John told him, all innocence. “Just a couple questions, doc. Deep background. I promise, nothing you say will appear in print.”

~*~*~*~

Dr. Gillis told John things he already knew, more than he wanted to know, and nothing that could help him track the thing responsible. John had jotted down details he wished he could scrub out of his brain, but knew it would be a long, long time before they would fade. He came back that night, broke in to examine the bodies and read them for EMF, and only succeeded in vomiting for the first time in a long time. It wasn’t that the sight was gruesome, although it was. It was that the boys were just the right age. He couldn’t look at the victims without seeing Dean and Sam. 

Before sneaking into the morgue, he’d tried calling Caleb again, and got a busy tone. He’d try again tomorrow, see if it was just Caleb’s mother or if the phones were still out from the storm.

He pushed away the pit in his stomach, told himself the boys were fine.

As for his hunt, well…he was beginning to doubt. There hadn’t been any EMF, though that only meant it wasn’t a spirit. There were still plenty of other horrible things it could be. It had only been a hunch, after all. And while whatever was doing this certainly deserved to be shown the quick elevator down to Hell, he had no real evidence that it actually was a supernatural creature. He just knew it to be so, in his gut.

But where the hell had it gone?

He went back to the motel to shower, add his new notes to the old ones, and build his file to look for a pattern. Two days of hard driving took their toll, however, and he fell asleep on the table. 

_A tall, good-looking man, wearing jeans, a white t-shirt, and Ray-bans, smiled at someone off to his left, all teeth. “What do you want me to do?” he asked the person._

_“A small errand, if you would be so kind,” a voice said. That voice made him shiver, and yet feel warm. “Lucien informs me that a Soft Place has formed, a result of some recent…activity in the waking world.”_

_He tried to shift his perspective, to get a view of the speaker and his surroundings. Instead, the whole scene shifted. He saw the man with the sunglasses again, this time in the hotel room, holding a long-bladed hunting knife._

_“Hey, boys,” the man said, flashing that million-dollar smile. “Did you miss me?” Then he reached up, and took off his glasses. Where his eyes should have been, there were two additional sets of teeth. Then the teeth…the teeth said, “Let’s play.” And on the floor in front of him, bound and gagged, Dean started screaming…._

John snapped awake. Bile rose in his throat and he tamped it back down. He guzzled some water to wash out the taste, checking his watch. He’d slept for a couple hours; it was just after dawn. Way too early to go to the bars for any information about where the hustlers could be found, but he could probably get to the Hall of Records, look up Martins and see what he could find there.

His search yielded a somewhat expected result. Kyle Martins had been a student at Heaton Middle School. He left home in 1992, at age 13; the school had listed him as truant, but the parents never filed a missing persons report. John almost felt like tracking those parents down and spitting in their faces. He reminded himself to call Caleb again, before leaving the county building, to check on the boys. Maybe he wasn’t going to win Father of the Year, but by God, he thought, at least he would never turn his back on his own sons.

Logic told him he should look up the parents anyway, see if they knew anything about why their son had left, had they had any contact (the mother, maybe?) in the last two years. He didn’t trust himself to run the interview, but he knew he had to check it out. _Work the job, Winchester,_ he told himself. _Get a grip._

He lucked out – found the mother at home, only one neighbor staying with her. “My husband’s gone to…make our arrangements,” she murmured numbly in answer to his gentle question about his whereabouts.

“I’m very sorry,” he told her, and meant it. “I hate to ask these questions now, but…my investigation can’t wait.”

“Agent Hudson, she’s already talked to the FBI,” the neighbor put in. “If you don’t mind my asking, what interest does the NSA have in this case?”

“I don’t mind,” John said mildly. “My task force is looking into an organ black market ring. We think—I’m very sorry to say this—but we think Kyle’s assailant may have sold his eyes.”

He weathered the woman’s fresh tears with sympathy, waiting for them to subside. “Mrs. Martins, did you ever have contact with your son after he left home?”

She shook her head solemnly. “Kyle…I should have found him. I should have made it right. His father…. No,” she said, gaining her composure and answering as if for the first time. “No, we never heard from him.”

John looked at the neighbor, sending her a signal. “Thank you for your time.” He rose and silently asked the other woman to see him to the door. She picked up on the cue and patting Mrs. Martins’ hand, she led him out. He turned to face her in the foyer.

“Am I right, Mrs….”

“Ms.,” she corrected. “Hutchinson.”

“Ms. Hutchinson, am I right that Kyle’s father forbade his wife to try to find him?” John asked, not wanting to know the answer. Needing to know the answer, even though it really had no bearing on his case.

Ms. Hutchinson bit her lip. Finally she nodded, eyes closing in shame. “Jerry’s a good man, Agent Hudson, but he’s got his blind spots, I guess. Kyle was a sweet kid, you know? But…different. I wish I could say I’m surprised that he got hurt.”

John suppressed a sigh, opting instead for a professional-sounding grunt. “Well, thank you again.” 

He stepped onto the porch and breathed deep. _Damn. Forgot to call Caleb,_ he thought. _Back to the hotel, then._

~*~*~*~

“Yeah, we’re fine,” Caleb said on the other side of the line. “Storm blew us around a bit, but no major damage.”

“Good to hear,” John said. 

“The boys are sparring out back…wanna talk to ‘em?” Caleb asked.

John’s lip quivered. “Nah,” he decided after a hesitation. “Long as they’re all right. They behaving themselves?”

He could hear Caleb frown in assessment. “More or less. Nothing to worry about.”

John grunted. “Dean or Sam?” he asked with the tone of giving straight odds.

“Yes,” Caleb said with a laugh. “Really, John, everything’s okay on this end. You?”

“No luck so far. They’ve ID’d one victim; kid was a runaway, hustling his ass, so the younger kid probably was, too. Feds are already here, else I’d go back to see what I can dig up on recent runaways in the area. Maybe by Monday they’ll have blown out of town.”

“Still sure this is even something supernatural?”

“Any other case, I’d say no. But my gut says hell yeah, it’s supernatural.” He told Caleb briefly about his dream.

“John.”

“I know.”

“I’m saying….”

“I know,” he repeated with more emphasis.

“You were worried because the phones were down.”

“Yeah.”

“And because this kid was Dean’s age.”

“Caleb. I know. But it’s not just that. Look, I can’t shake this feeling. Something about this is more than your average serial nutcase.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes shut. “I just don’t know enough yet. I need to spend some serious time at the library, find out the history of this thing.” He paced a little as he thought out his options. “If this lead doesn’t pan out…I’ll head out within a week. Pick them up. Maybe head to one of Jeff’s cabins, take some R&R. It’s just…we’ve always assumed this guy is human. I need to find out more before I can know for sure.”

Caleb sighed. “Yeah, okay. Watch your six, right?”

“You know I will.”

He found a decent family-style restaurant for dinner, cruising the paper as he ate for any additional attacks. No reports of anything remotely fishy leapt out at him, and the only follow-up to the case was a half-inch story that “Police were still investigating” and that “thus far, there were no leads.” 

It was Saturday night, so he hit a bar near his motel, asking some well-placed questions about blonds with sunglasses and attitude, and/or where a guy could find a little companionship on any given night. Once he got answers there, he tried a different bar, for confirmation. He stumbled back to the room about 1:30, wrote two pages for his journal, and nodded off just about sunrise, but at least he didn’t dream.

He woke around ten and went straight to the library after breakfast. Hours later, his back was twisted into knots and his satchel was full of photocopied microfiche. The earliest reported murders he could find were in New York City, and they dated back to 1924. 

He brought his finds back to the hotel, trying to make sense of them. It seemed to attack in spurts - a few incidents here and there, then gone again for years - and always in a different city. Then there were the reports in 1989, just before it disappeared. And now. 

So maybe the thing wasn’t really gone then. Maybe it was just going through a dormant cycle.

He traced what he knew: the thing could pass for human. It appeared to be a 25-35 year old male, usually blond, charming smile, a few accounts even said handsome, but it always wore dark glasses - even in the 1920’s. More recent cases reported that it drove, so it was able to adapt to the changing times fairly well. And it preyed on boys, usually prostitutes, almost always strays or runaways. And it took their eyes. There was a tiny bit of lore on the Corinthian, the bulk of it from the 1950’s and 60’s, and none of it reassuring. For one thing, he had absolutely no idea how to kill it, even if he did find it. Well, bullets would be a start.

He pushed up from his chair, rubbing his own strained eyes. He needed a shower, a beer, and some food, not necessarily in that order. It being Sunday night, he couldn’t get back to the library without breaking in, and he doubted there’d be much point going downtown looking for Kyle Martins’ buddies. Perhaps find another bar, one where he could replenish his cash with a friendly game of pool. Shower first, then dinner, he decided.

He came back a while later, with $100 minus the price of a cold six-pack. He cracked a can open to fortify himself while he went back over his notes. After half an hour in the amazingly uncomfortable chair, he moved his papers to the bed with a fatalistic sigh, knowing that he would probably nod off, but unable to resist the pull of the mattress.

_“Lucien informs me that a soft…. a result of …activity in the waking world,” a cultured voice said to his right. He looked out of the corner of his eye, easing himself in the direction of the voice._

_The world seemed to slide a little on its side, but he made out an apparition, paler than any ghost, dressed in long robes cinched at the waist like one of Jim’s cassocks. Around his neck, the young man wore the purest emerald he had ever seen. His eyes were fathomless black. He was so mesmerized by the voice’s owner and the jewel, that he missed the meaning of the words. “Apparently … been lost. I believe it is not alone; … taken the opportunity to explore. As you will remember from … the temptation can be….”_

_“Overwhelming, yes, Lord.” A third voice said this, gravel-rough and heavy with lust, but he couldn’t see the source. It seemed familiar._

_“I could send Matthew with you,” the first voice continued. “But I believe this is a task best accomplished alone. And discreetly. The fewer who know about the matter, the more likely your mission will remain uncompromised. And uncomplicated.”_

_“I’ll leave at once, my Lord.” The man with the sunglasses flashed his pearlies again and offered up a jaunty salute._

_Then something changed, and he saw the man again, this time with a knife in his hand. “Into the waking world,” he said, and suddenly they were surrounded by cabs and bright traffic lights at night. The man had climbed out of a four-door sedan and was walking toward a boy…a boy with green eyes…._

John lurched up from the headboard, eyes swimming in the sudden yellow light of the bedside lamp. _Dammit,_ he thought, as he reached into the minifridge for another of his beers. _So much for sleeping tonight._

~*~*~*~

Monday dawned and with it another chance to mine the police records for new information. He spent a frustrating day trying to track down the missing details from the police reports, following up on a couple questions raised by the reports, and trying - unsuccessfully - to settle the nervous pit that had taken up residence in his stomach. He called Caleb again to check in, and once again, he reported that Dean and Sam were fine, but out running. 

“Any headway?”

“Some. Caleb, this thing…it’s got quite the history. But I’ve got no idea where it’ll strike next.” They conferred a little more, inconclusively, before hanging up. John forced himself to take a nap before venturing out that night in search of anyone who might have seen Kyle Martins, his friend, or the creature known as the Corinthian.

An hour or so after dark, he found his way to the seedy areas of town and parked the Impala around the corner from a knot of assorted hookers. Approaching them on foot, he’d found, made him less a threat, less likely to be taken for a cop, and less likely to be propositioned. It wasn’t proof against any of the three, but it helped.

Not on a Monday night, apparently. Business must have been comparatively slow. Three corners (and at least five offers) later, he found a young man who knew Kyle. “Yeah, I saw him last Monday,” the kid said twenty bucks later. “He was with Peaby.”

“Peaby have a real name?” John asked.

The kid shrugged. “No idea. Showed up about a year ago, Kyle started looking out for him.”

“Why Peaby?”

“Cause the little bitch wouldn’t eat nuthin’ but peanut butter sandwiches. PB, get it?”

“Got it. So they used to cruise together?” He shoved his hands down into his pockets out of habit.

“Nah. Kyle wouldn’t let the kid sell it. Peaby ran interference.”

“But not a week ago, right?”

The kid crossed his arms. At first, John thought he was going to hold out for more money, but the youth just looked up at him. For a moment, John saw Dean, open-faced, eyes seeking approval; then Sam seemed to stand before him, obstinate, but deciding, this once, to trust his old man. “Mister. This guy…with the sunglasses?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s bad news, right?”

“Real bad,” John agreed, favoring the young man with a grimace that meant both agreement and, had it been his boys, pride that they’d identified their target. “You seen him around again?”

“Not after that night,” the kid told him, and then the story spilled out. “He came around looking, about…nine o’clock? Pulled right up to where Kyle was standing. They talked a bit. Then Kyle walked over to me and Jamaica, away from the car. Which is unusual for Kyle – I mean, we can’t afford to be picky, right? But the guy didn’t leave. Jamaica went up to the window, but a minute later he’s back saying the guy wants to talk to Kyle again. So Kyle goes back, then he motions to Peaby and they both get in. Then the guy pulled away. That was the last I saw of any of ‘em.”

“What kind of car?”

“I dunno. Nothing flash. Didn’t really fit him, though. He was a James Dean type, oughta been driving some ’60’s Bel Air or something. It was just a normal four-door car. Like maybe a Toyota?”

An afterburn of the car in his dream danced in John’s mind. “You said Kyle protected Peaby,” he pressed. “Why would he change his mind?”

“I dunno.”

“Is Jamaica here? Maybe I could ask him.”

The kid looked around. “Must be with someone. Or maybe he’s working the corner of Arroyo and Carteret.”

“Notice anything else about the guy?”

“Like what?”

John shrugged, opening his coat a little as he spread hands still in his pockets. “Anything out of the ordinary. Like…. Did he ever take off the shades?”

The kid thought about it. “No. He didn’t. Huh. That’s kinda weird. Tell you something else.”

“What’s that?”

“Usually, johns, especially new ones, they cruise around a bit, first. One time I had a guy pass me maybe eight times before he got up the nerve to pull over. This guy? He just pulled right up, like he knew exactly what he was looking for.”

“Okay.” John took out his wallet. On a sudden impulse, he took out another fifty bucks and folded it up. “Here. Get a good meal, okay, kid? Sleep somewhere warm tonight. Do me a favor and don’t spend it on drugs.”

“Dude! Thanks,” the kid said, pocketing the money quickly. 

John walked back to the car, ignoring the three hookers who tried to attract his attention on the way. At Carteret and Arroyo, he talked to a kid with uncomfortably familiar dark curls and a young, almost pudgy face. Jamaica hadn’t been seen there, but the boy thought he might be at Minnequa Park. As John approached the park, he caught the unmistakable flash of police lights ahead, and pulled over. He dug out the FBI badge, plus the NSA one as a backup. 

He walked up to the scene, where cops were busy pulling a dozen or so men out of the park. No Feds in sight. Without flinching, John approached a uniformed officer a little younger than himself, and flashed the FBI badge. “Officer? I’m looking for a kid named Jamaica. Any idea if he’s in among this lot?”

The cop looked surprised. “Uh…You’ll have to ask the Sergeant,” he said, pointing to a plainclothes officer. 

John wandered around the scene for a while, talking with the arresting detectives. They knew Jamaica, but hadn’t seen him that evening. A plainclothes cop overheard and volunteered that Vice had picked up Jamaica last night; kid was on his third strike and would be going to a juvenile camp in Fall River after his hearing. John watched as men and boys were put into vans and taken to the precinct for booking. Too many boys for his comfort. One looked like he’d just hit a growth spurt, and his ankles poked out from his jeans cuffs, the way Dean’s had done two summers ago. John headed back for the Impala and the hotel. His hunt was far from over, but he was done for the night.

Tuesday morning, he found an article in the _Wichita Eagle_ , reporting the brutal murder and mutilation of a thirteen-year-old boy.

The body had been discovered on Monday morning when the hotel housekeeper had let herself in to clean. Police were not releasing the name of the man who had rented the room. According to the article, the young boy was a suspected runaway (identity withheld), who had been living on the street for at least one year. Unnamed witnesses said they had last seen the boy in the company of a tall, muscular blond man, approximately age 28, who wore a motorcycle jacket and sunglasses.

John checked out of his motel that morning and hit Wichita by 4:00 PM.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean and Sam followed the pumpkin-headed scarecrow downhill to a crossroads, where he pulled up short. To their left, the ground was black, hard-caked, and cracked. Steam rose through the vents formed by the asphalt. To their right, purple grass grew tall and waving against a bright green picket fence.

“Now, here’s da rub,” their guide said around lighting yet another cigarette. “Should I takes youse up trew da gates a horn an’ ivory, or down trew da skerries?” He sighed. “Da skerries might get youse back unnoticed, but it’s furda outta da way. Which puts me behind schedule. An’ I’m still down a coupla woikers.”

Sam looked at Dean. “Is he asking us?” he whispered. Dean shrugged. Sam spoke louder. “Are…are you really asking us? Sir?”

The scarecrow pshawed. “What sir? I woik for a livin’. Jes’ call me Merv.”

“Merv?” Dean repeated.

“Youse heard me. That’s my name. Mervyn Pumpkinhead.”

“Oh. Original,” Dean observed with sarcasm, but Sam slapped his arm testily.

“Dean…don’t make it mad,” he warned.

“It’s okay, kid,” Mervyn Pumpkinhead said. “Trust me, I hoid it all before.” He took a long drag on his smoke, then dropped the butt and stomped it under his boot. Instantly, he flipped the broom off his shoulder and swept up his own refuse into a dustpan clipped to the broom handle.

Dean looked at Sam. “Sammy, didn’t he have a mop when we started out?”

“Yup,” Sam said solemnly.

“Just checking,” Dean said dryly. He looked heavenward, biting his lips in thought as if keeping back further comment.

“Come on,” Mervyn said then, apparently having made his decision. “Gates a horn an’ ivory it is.” He took the right turning, leaving Sam and Dean to trail behind him.

~*~*~*~

They noticed that the terrain changed around them even as they walked along the path. Sam’s hand crept toward Dean, and Dean did not flinch away when his brother grasped his palm for reassurance. He kept hold of Sam, giving his fingers a light squeeze now and then. It felt eerily like when he’d walked Sammy to his first day of school, the very first time, with Sammy’s pudgy hand trembling in his, but his face resolute and full of anticipation. Only this time, there was no mundane classroom waiting for them.

The purple grass gave way to trees, the picket fence to verdant hedgerows, and Mervyn Pumpkinhead led them into a well-tended garden. The hedgerow formed an arch, beyond which they saw two hills and a house atop each. The right-hand house had a trimmed lawn, brightly painted gingerbread, and windowboxes bursting with pansies in every color imaginable. The left-hand house was in disrepair, on rocky ground, and somehow, while the sun shone on the right, it was storming over the house on the left.

“Ho, boy,” Mervyn said, glancing to his left. “Looks like he’s in fine form today.” He tromped up the walkway and long before Dean thought he should have been able to, he tugged on the bell-pull by the door.

“Dis’s probbaly da fastest way ta get youse wherever you’re goin’,” Mervyn explained while they waited. The door was studded with ironwork, and a little grille in the top protected a miniature door serving as the peephole.

“O—kay,” Dean said.

Presently, the peephole opened and a gold beak and black button eye regarded the visitors. “Meep?”

“Hey, Goldie,” Mervyn said with surprising gentility. “Daddy home?”

“Meep,” said the bird-thing, and the little door shut. A moment later the whole door drifted back on its hinges. A stout, short fellow in a velvet smoking jacket stood there.

“M-m-m-mervyn,” he stammered. “W-w-what a surprise!”

“Yeah. Listen, I can’t stay. Some of us got woik ta do. But I was hopin’ you could help me out…these two, they’re travelin’ trew.”

“D-d-dreamers?” the man asked. He scratched his short goatee.

Mervyn snorted. “You’d tink, but no. They’re awake.”

“Oh!” the man said, and actually fluttered his hands a little.

“Uh…can I talk to you for a second?” Dean asked Mervyn.

The scarecrow turned around, pulled out another cigarette. “What?”

Dean cast a nervous glance at the rather fruity fat man in the doorway. He stepped around Mervyn for some privacy. “Look, no offense, but…is this guy, uh, safe? Around kids?” He jerked his head toward Sam, who scowled at him. Dean shrugged. Just a few hours ago, he never would have expected to prefer the company of a talking jack-o-lantern over a possibly pedophiliac stuttering weirdo.

“Dean, I’m not helpless,” Sam said.

Mervyn Pumpkinhead blinked. At least, Dean thought it was a blink. The triangles in his shell dilated to little pin-pricks, then opened again. “Are you kiddin’?” he asked. “Kid, he’s about as safe as it’s possible to get in dis place.” He reached around Dean to the take the man’s arm. “Anyways, I was sayin’ if you could maybe bring ‘em trew by your gate, maybe help ‘em find a way back where dey came from, I’d owe youse. Tanks, Abe,” he continued over the little man’s stammering. “You’re a real pal. Okay, so, uh…dis here’s Abe, and Abe…dese kids are Dean and Sam.” He shook Dean’s hand once, then Sam’s, and set off back down the hill quickly. “Sorry I can’t stick around wit youse, but I’m on the clock, ya know. So, tanks again, Abe!” he called over his shoulder.

“B-b-b-but…” “Abe” called after him, stepping onto his threshold. Mervyn simply waved his hand in farewell and kept moving. He disappeared into the hedgerows in record time, but Dean couldn’t see him flicker or jump ahead like a ghost. Abe sighed, bringing Dean’s attention back to him. “Y-y-you might as well c-c-come in. This is G-g-goldie. Goldie, say hello to the n-n-nice b-boys.”

The golden bird flapped its wings to propel itself around Sam’s head. “Meep!” it said.

“G-goldie likes you,” Abe said.

“Uh, great,” Sam replied gamely, wary of the sharp beak. Up close, they saw that in addition to the beak and wings, the creature had legs and arms. “What…what kind of bird is he?”

Abe let out a nervous titter of a laugh. “He’s not a b-bird,” he said. He led them into a cozy room with a snug love seat and two winged chairs arranged by a little fireplace. “He’s a g-g-g—”

“A gargoyle, you pusillanimous, mealy-mouthed nancy,” growled a voice from one of the wingchairs. “For the love of…you’d think after six thousand years, you’d get over the stutter.” The owner of the voice stood up. His hair formed two wings over his temples. A pair of round glasses perched on his nose, connected by a chain to his waistcoat pocket. His goatee was longer and wilder than Abe’s. He wore a set of tweed tails and wing-tipped shoes, and he leered at Abe with loathing and disdain.

“C-c-c-cain, we have g-g-guests,” Abe said pointedly. The man shook out a hand that had already formed a fist. His head swiveled to regard Sam and Dean for the first time.

“Ah. So you have. Well, then.” He looked them both over and continued with unrestrained boredom, “And what brings you two seekers to my brother’s gate?”

Dean gaped. Sam gulped, but recovered his voice first. “You’re brothers?” he asked.

“The first brothers, in fact,” the bespectacled man told him. 

Sam looked at Dean, eyes wide. “Cain,” he breathed. “And...Abel?”

“The same,” Cain said. His brow furrowed and he closed on Sam. Before Dean could put himself between them, Cain pushed back Sam’s cap and raked through his mop of hair, exposing his forehead. Sam batted his hands away and Cain’s arms fell to his sides without resistance. “Ah,” he said softly. “Well, this is an interesting development.”

“Don’t touch him,” Dean said through gritted teeth. He placed his hands on Sam’s upper arms and pulled him back toward him, away from Cain. Sam’s arms were shaking through his thin t-shirt. Once again, Dean wished he were armed. It might not have done him any good, but he’d at least have felt more comfortable.

“Don’t worry,” Cain said with a grin that did nothing to put Dean at ease. “As one older brother to another, I would never think of usurping your right.”

Dean’s eyes slid down toward Sam as he asked, “What right?”

Cain cocked his head. “The right of the murderer, of course,” he said. “Brother!” he continued with a cackle. “Make yourself useful, you lump! Give them guestright.”

“R-r-right, C-c-cain, I was g-g-getting to that….”

“Well, get about it, then! Bring them some tea, and then,” he grinned wolfishly again at Sam, “Perhaps we’ll decide to let them pass.”

~*~*~*~

John made the Wichita station on Main Street his first stop. Still dodging the real FBI agents, he bluffed his way in with the NSA cover, and charmed Det. Joan Merchant into showing him the police reports.

As John expected, the witnesses had seen the victim approach a tan Honda Accord around 9:15 on Sunday night. They described the driver as a white man, about 27 or 28, with short-cropped blond hair and sunglasses. He’d checked in to the Homestead Inn at 9:35 (according to the credit card sale), and disappeared that morning. No one saw him leave. The room and car were both registered to a Mr. Kurt Livingston. But Mr. Livingston was a black man, who had reported his wallet and Honda Accord stolen on the 11th, three nights before the murder. The victim’s name was Tim Gantry, a minor with two prior arrests for solicitation. Parents were dead; an aunt lived in Topeka and was on her way for his remains.

“That is one identification I’m not looking forward to,” Det. Merchant told him. At least she wasn’t stupid enough to leave an out-of-town officer alone with police evidence; she had stayed with him to watch him look through the box. “I’m trying to convince my Lieu that she shouldn’t view the body. If she’s got a mortuary, we can send him over without her having to see…” she swallowed. “Anyway, the car and the credit card are dead leads. FBI has nothing. You have any information you could share?” She leaned in a bit, smelling of hyacinth.

John cleared his throat. “I…I know that he disappeared for a few years, killed two boys in Pueblo last week.”

“Yeah, the FBI already showed up with that much,” Joan said, unimpressed. “Any clue how to find him?”

“Goes after boys,” John said thickly. “Unfortunately, I have a feeling he’s already moved on. Especially if he’s changed vehicles.”

“Damn,” Joan sighed. “Lieu hates a cold case.”

John grunted noncommittally. “Yeah, my boss, too. FBI have anything helpful to offer?” he probed.

She shrugged and shook her head. “Nothing conclusive. Nothing that will help us track him down, that’s for sure.”

John stood up from his review of the evidence. “Well, if you give me your number, I can call you if I turn anything up,” he offered, pressing his advantage. He had no intention of calling, but he figured if he appeared to respond to her fishing, he could stay in her good books for a while longer.

Sure enough, his patented Boy!Winchester smile melted her. She dug out her card and wrote another number on the back. “That’s my home number,” she told him as she handed it over. “In case you think of something…before morning.”

John extricated himself from Det. Merchant’s hopeful hints and found the hotel next. He remembered the place from back when he and Mike had run the garage. There was an auction outfit in Wichita that specialized in rare auto parts. John had run over about every other month to bid on salvage parts. The hotel was two blocks away. He’d even brought Mary along once, made a weekend out of it, back when Dean had been just a few months old and they needed a break, but couldn’t afford a real vacation.

The clerk hadn’t been on shift when “Mr. Livingston” came in, but John’s fake ID convinced the kid to provide the number of the person who had been at the desk. John used their phone and got her address. As he walked back to the car, he noticed storm clouds gathering ominously. The rain started about halfway to the girl’s apartment. By the time he stood on her doorstep, rain was pounding the pavement so hard that the drops bounced over two feet on the rebound.

She looked at his badge, but didn’t invite him in. John looked out at the rain and back with a hangdog look. “Mind if I come in and ask you a few questions?” he pushed.

“Oh. Right.” She opened the door to let him step over the threshold. “Sorry, but…my boyfriend’s sleeping, so if you don’t mind staying here in the hall…?”

“It’s okay,” John said, favoring her with a paternal smile. “Out of the rain is all I was looking for.”

“Right. Sorry.”

“So, Miss Pellham, you were working at the Homestead Inn on Sunday night?”

“Yes. I told the police….”

“I’m conducting my own investigation, miss, so you might be hearing a lot of the same questions.”

“Oh.” She deflated a bit.

“You were working that night?”

“Yes.” She crossed her arms, weight on one foot.

“And you rented a room to a man calling himself Livingston?”

“Yeah. He…he came in about 9:30? He was alone. Wore sunglasses, but he was real cute otherwise. Short blond brush-cut. Tall, muscular. He was wearing just a white muscle shirt and jeans. Tight jeans. Nice smile.” Her eyes darted down the hall where her boyfriend supposedly slept. “Anyway, he wanted a room, just for the one night. Didn’t talk much, but usually they don’t. People are tired….”

“Yeah,” John agreed. “Then what?”

“Well…he took his key, and then…he went back out. To his car, I guess. He wrote down the license plate. I heard a car start up about a minute later, so I guess he pulled around to his room.” She shrugged and walked around him to the door.

John didn’t move. “Did you see him again? Did he go out?”

“Uh….” She turned, leaning against the front door. “He came out of the room and went to the ice machine, about an hour later. That was it.”

“Was there anyone else in the hotel, near his room?”

“No…it was a slow night. There was a trucker, in 115. But that’s all the way on the end.”

“And you never saw the young man he had with him?”

“No. I thought,” she gazed up and John swallowed a lump at how young she was, “I thought he looked like a nice guy, you know? Even tried to joke with him a little. You know, ‘Mr. Livingston, I presume?’” She shook her head and her tone changed to vague disgust. “Never woulda thought he was a fag-killer.”

John gritted his teeth. “He killed a thirteen-year-old boy, miss. A kid who was living the only way he could. Not a ‘fag.’” He stopped himself before lecturing more, realizing he was starting to unload a week’s worth of stress on her, realizing that her bigotry wasn’t really what was setting him off.

Her face clouded and she pushed herself off the door. “You got any more questions?” she asked harshly.

“Just one. Did you ever see him without the glasses?”

She thought about it. “No. Even when he came out for ice, he had the shades on. Weird.”

“Thanks,” John said, putting away his notebook. He pulled his collar up and ducked outside when she opened the door. A flash of lightning bathed the street in white for two seconds as he splashed down the stairs. The thunderclap followed before he hit sidewalk. John was soaked well before he could get to the Impala, parked only halfway down the block. 

He had to blow the Impala’s fan on cold full blast to keep the windows from fogging. Rain was driving at the windshield so hard that it formed a curtain of grey around the car. He just sat at a corner for five minutes, waiting for it to subside and debating whether looking for Tim’s colleagues in this weather would be a complete waste of time.

He pushed forward anyway, relying on a ten-year-old memory of Wichita’s bars and red-light sections. The streets weren’t quite as deserted as he thought they’d be, and he fished out an old umbrella to cover his head while he looked for someone who had seen Tim that night. The scant protection did nothing for his shoes, however, and the few hookers who were desperate enough to venture out on such a night had no interest in talking, nor any information to offer even for the meager cash he could spare them.

By the time he returned to his own hotel room, John had sneezed about a dozen times and his nose had acquired a constant drip. Uncharacteristically, he used the coffeepot in the room to make hot tea, wishing like hell he’d stopped at a minimart for some instant soup.

A hot shower did little to clear him out. He dug through the duffel for aspirin, popped a sample packet of pills even though they were past the expiration date, and stretched out on the bed, propping himself up so he could breathe. The room swam despite his attempt to focus on the grainy cable signal through the TV. John closed his eyes and gave in to exhaustion.

_A tall, pale man with a shock of white hair and deep black eyes, wearing a brilliant green pendant, spoke to a very thin man with glasses and horn-shaped hair, dressed in a frock coat and spats. “Show him in,” the young man said. The butler-type bowed and ducked out while his master seated himself on a high throne._

_Then a good-looking man wearing jeans, a white t-shirt, and Ray-bans, entered the room. He walked up to the throne and held up a hand in informal greeting._

_“You wished to see me, Lord?”_

_“Ah, Corinthian. Yes. I have a job for you.” He rose and walked off the dais, crossing to a window on his right._

_The Corinthian smiled, all teeth. “What do you want me to do?” he asked._

_“A small errand, if you would be so kind,” the young lord said. “Lucien informs me that a Soft Place has formed, a result of some recent volatile storm activity in the waking world._

_“Apparently, with the recent turmoil, some dream sand has been lost. I believe it is not alone; a minor nightmare may have taken the opportunity to explore. As you will remember from your own past forays, the temptation can be….”_

_“Overwhelming, yes, Lord.” A third voice said this, gravel-rough. The Corinthian had taken off his glasses, and…his eyes were not eyes at all, but teeth. The teeth were talking…._

_And once again, the Corinthian slid his glasses on over those gaping mouths, and pulled out his knife. The scene around him twisted in on itself, growing dark with smoke. Through the layer of smoke and dust, he saw two figures standing hand in hand. The taller had short hair bleached a little by the sun, the shorter one a mess of dark curls. As the boys stood there, unarmed, a thin funnel of dust formed around them, through which the Corinthian smiled with all three sets of teeth…_

John jerked awake with a loud snort. His head felt as stuffed as a Thanksgiving turkey. The TV was still on, broadcasting a mid-morning exercise show. He dug through the covers for the remote and surfed for the weather channel.

“…coming up on 12:00 noon, Eastern Daylight time. Stay tuned; we’ll have complete coverage of the Midwestern storms, right after this.”

John stumbled to the bathroom to blow his nose. He left the door open to listen while he took care of business. When the ads gave way to the weather report, he leaned on the doorjamb to give the broadcast his attention.

“There’s been _lots_ of tornado activity in the Alley, folks, systems moving from Oklahoma north to Nebraska. Right here,” the falsely cheery weathergirl said, “is where that storm hit Wichita, Kansas, two days ago. Now we have reports of an F3 just outside Junction City about an hour ago, but what’s left of that system is heading north.” She pointed to another cloud icon on her right. “There’s another weather band here, near North Platte, and that’s heading east, so when these two systems meet, it could be quite the lightshow, folks. And that should be sometime after 5:00 PM today.” The image switched to a bullet-list of counties as she continued in voice-over. “So, Tornado warnings are in effect for everything from Topeka and Kansas City up through Omaha, through midnight tonight. Now, folks, if you are in a heavy storm area….”

John turned back to the sink and ran some water to wash his face, hoping it would make him feel halfway human again. As he closed his eyes to splash himself, he heard again the mild, resonant voice from his dreams. _“…Volatile storm activity…dream sand has been lost….”_

He straightened up and spoke to his reflection in the mirror. “It’s following the storms,” he told his scruffy self. “And the storms are headed….” He reeled out of the bathroom, cramming his notes and papers into his bag in swift sweeps. His rush to gather up his minimal kit and get to the car would have broken Dean’s best record. He even left the hotel without bothering to turn off the TV – or the taps on the bathroom sink.

~*~*~*~

John could see the rain clouds off to his left as he drove north on the 81, but to his right the sky was blue and perfect. Still, he pushed the Impala and himself, stopping only for cough drops, gas, orange juice, and tea, wishing the last could be coffee. He leaned back with relief as he nosed the Impala into Caleb’s driveway.

Caleb came onto the porch while John was climbing out of the car.

“Didn’t expect to see you back so soon,” the arms-dealer said amiably. Then, more concerned: “John, you don’t look so good.”

“Thanks,” John answered with a decided undercurrent of “go to Hell,” but he leaned heavily on the doorframe of the Impala. “Where are Starsky and Hutch?” he asked as he scanned the property.

“Out for a run,” Caleb told him. “They’ll be back.”

“They shouldn’t be out,” John said harshly. “Caleb, that thing’s moving with the storms. He’s headed here.”

Caleb’s eyes widened, but he came closer and studied John’s face intently. “You running a fever?”

“Probably. That’s not the point—”

“John. The storms aren’t due until later. They’re fine. Come inside, man, you look like you’re gonna fall over.”

“Listen to me,” John said, but Caleb crossed his arms.

“John, they are fine. Dean’s not going to go off with some random guy. He can take care of himself and Sammy can, too. They’ve gone running just about every day this week. It’s not like they don’t know the terrain. And even if the thing is tied to the weather, look around!” He gestured up at the brilliant sunshine. “We’ve got time before that front hits. Okay?” Caleb laid a hand on his shoulder. “Jesus, John, you’re fucking burning up.”

“Not important,” John bit out.

“Like fucking hell,” Caleb said. “Come on, man, I’ve got some DayQuil. Shit.”

Caleb opened the rear door and retrieved John’s hastily-thrown bag. He walked up to the porch and held the screen door open. “Coming?”

John took a deep breath that brought on an equally deep cough. “Yeah. Okay.” He shuffled forward, still coughing, and pushed past Caleb into the relative cool of the house.

Caleb dosed him with Robitussin and aspirin and listened while John laid down everything he had learned, and everything he believed, about the Corinthian. 

“So… you think he’s moving with the storms because of this dream?” Caleb asked. “Which you had when you had a fever.”

“I had the dream before, though,” John insisted. “Parts of it, anyway. I don’t know. I’m not psychic. I just can’t explain it.”

“What else do you remember?”

John pieced together the bits of his dreams, knowing they sounded absurd, but also confident that Caleb wouldn’t discount them just because they were bizarre. They’d both seen stranger things than most people would believe even if they’d caught it on video. He kept glimpsing a pure emerald worn by someone with white hair and demon-black eyes, but couldn’t figure out whether it was connected or not. He told Caleb about the cyclone in his last dream, and how he’d seen Dean and Sam and the Corinthian without his sunglasses, talking through teeth set into his eye sockets.

Once he’d spilled out everything he could think of for Caleb’s analysis, John sat back against the sofa cushions. “What time did they go out?” he asked, looking at Caleb’s plaster ceiling.

“About…one?” Caleb said. “It’s just about three. That’s not unusual, John. Look, you’re beat. Why don’t you get forty? If they’re not back by four-thirty, we’ll drive out and look for them.”

“Should run. They may have gone cross-country.”

“John. It’s all farms. And you’re in no shape for running.”

John grunted. The ceiling had been spinning slowly since he looked up at it. He felt Caleb’s cool hand nudging him sideways, to rest his head on the arm of the sofa. “Four-thirty?” he mumbled in confirmation.

“Scout’s honor, John, I’ll wake you and we’ll look if they’re not back.”

“Mmf,” John said, which in his head came out as, “You’d better.”

Caleb shook his shoulder about five seconds later. “John.”

“Whuh?” John smacked his dry tongue to the roof of his mouth. He rubbed his eyes wearily. “They back?” he asked.

The pause told him all he needed to know. “It’s four-thirty, then?” he confirmed, swinging his legs off the couch.

“Actually, almost five. How do you feel?”

“Just great,” John growled. “Where are my kids?”

Caleb’s face flushed. “Yeah, uh…. I’ll drive.”

“Fine. You drive; I’m going on foot.”

John ignored Caleb’s appeals to his reason and simply stalked out to the road. Caleb muttered a curse and grabbed some water bottles. He pinned a hasty note to the door, in case the boys came back while they were out. He jogged to catch up and fell in step with John. Neither spoke while they walked along. Caleb divided his attention between the roads, watching for signs of the two youngsters, and John, whose dark look suggested he was holding himself together by sheer force of will.

They walked along until they came to the intersection at Holdredge, turning east wordlessly. John coughed now and then, but did not stop, even when Caleb offered him a sweating water bottle. He cracked the cap, swigged, and screwed the cap back on without breaking his stride, looking from left to right constantly for any glimpse of the boys’ trail. 

When they reached the second crossroad, John paused. “North or south?” he asked Caleb.

“North. They wouldn’t go into Eagle.”

John turned left. They walked for two more country blocks and John stopped. “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to his left down Havelock.

Caleb blinked. “A fence, John.”

“No, _that_ ,” John said, and headed to a particular post along the right. As they approached, Caleb saw a thin black line cut across the wood.

“What _is_ that?” Caleb asked in confusion. John left the road and reached out for the post. He ran a finger along the black line. Caleb saw that it ringed the post entirely. “What the fuck…” Caleb breathed.

“Son of a bitch,” John said. He rolled the black tube off the post, twisting it in his hand. “It’s one of those damn jelly bracelets kids wear.” He looked at Caleb, who nearly flinched at the accusation in his friend’s eyes. “It’s Dean’s.”


	5. Chapter 5

Abel served them chamomile tea with gingerbread cookies and gummi worms. Sam had dangled a gummi worm for Goldie, who snapped at it in delicate bites. Then Goldie reached out for another worm, and held it up for Sam, who had laughed and gobbled it up without using his hands. Dean eyed a gingerbread cookie nervously.

“It’s harmless,” Cain told him. “You’re thinking of Faerieland, but that’s rather a long way from here. I can assure you, you will be able to return home even if you eat and drink. In fact, it’s better if you do.”

“Why?” Dean asked.

“G-g-guestright,” Abel said cheerfully. “If you’ve b-b-b-broken b-bread here, you’ll be under our Lord’s p-p-protection.”

“Oh.” Dean took a bite of the gingersnap. “Why do we need protection, again?” he asked. “Because we’re pretty used to taking care of ourselves, but we should know if there’s something out there that might mean trouble—”

“Oh, a good many things, my boy,” Cain answered. “But none that will do any lasting harm. Not here, anyway.”

“Ex-x-x-cept that if They find out he’s h-h-h-here, uh, They might c-c-come looking,” Abel said to Cain, pointing at Sam. His inflection implied the capital letters. 

Dean, who had plenty of experience holding private conversations with Sam in the middle of other people, could tell this was what he was watching. His eyes darted from the biblical brothers to his own sibling. “If who finds out, and why would they look for Sam?” Sam looked up when he heard his name.

Abel’s eyes widened. “It’s a s-s-secret,” he whispered. “B-b-but if you ask, I c-c-can—”

“No, you can’t,” Cain said decisively, slamming down his teacup. “That’s your problem, brother, stirring up trouble. As if they could come trespassing here. Moreover, it’s none of our business.”

“B-but the b-boy reached the D-d-dreaming, C-cain, s-s-so it’s p-possible. Anyway, D-dean asked.”

“I don’t care, and neither should you. That’s not one of _your_ secrets. You just want to warn them. Don’t you dare!” Cain stood up to loom over Abel’s perch on the little sofa. Dean reached out for Sam instinctively, and his brother came straight to Dean’s elbow, both watching the byplay fixedly.

“B-b-b-but C-cain, they c-came to my door, so I, uh, I can tell them a s-secret if I w-want to,” Abel said, placing his teacup gingerly on the table. 

“Not _that_ secret, nincompoop,” Cain argued. “That’s not _your_ secret to tell.” He pointed an accusing finger.

“I wasn’t g-g-going to t-t-tell them about the d-d-de—”

“Cretin!” Cain said vehemently, and launched himself at Abel. He grabbed his brother’s lapels and hauled him out of the chair to his feet, drew back his arm—

“STOP!” Dean shouted, on his feet. “Stop it! He’s your brother!”

Cain turned on Dean. He stared in murderous rage for a moment, Abel still clutched by the lapel in one hand. “Dean,” Cain said slowly, a predatory smile widening his mouth, “do you honestly mean to tell me you never want to kill Sammy?”

Dean shook his head, hands closing into fists. Next to him, Sam’s lip was quivering. “That doesn’t mean I _do_ it!”

“Perhaps you should try.” Cain dismissed him coldly and went back to pummeling Abel. He landed two open-handed slaps in quick succession, each one cracking as loud as a log snapping on the fire.

“Cut it out!” Dean yelled, while at the same time, Sam darted around the table and shouted at Abel, “Do something! Don’t let him hit you!”

The table was between Dean and Cain, but he vaulted over it. “STOP!” he screamed, and pushed Cain away from Abel. Sam immediately took a defensive stance in front of Abel, who fell back into his chair, blubbering. Cain took two steps backward, bumping into a wingchair, and looked down at his chest where Dean had shoved him.

“You pushed me,” he said, baffled. 

“Damn right I pushed you,” Dean told him, furious. “How could you do that to your own brother?”

“It’s…all right,” Abel said slowly from behind them. Goldie flew over to the chair arm and patted Abel’s hand. “D-d-dean, d-don’t. It’s…the way it is.” He sat up and dabbed at a split lip with a napkin. 

“Yeah? Well that sucks,” Dean said, turning to include Abel, but keeping an eye on Cain the way Dad had trained him. _Never assume an opponent is done until he’s down for the count or otherwise disabled._ But Cain was still gaping at Dean as if he could not believe what had happened. “How can you just let him wail on you like that?” Dean asked Abel in irritation.

“Dean’s right,” Sam said confidentially to Abel. “I mean, he’s a jerk and all, but he’d never really try to kill me.” He grinned at Dean. “And if he did, I’d just kill him right back.”

Dean snorted. “Yeah, right, twerp, like you could ever take me in a real fight.” He rounded on Cain again. “I just don’t understand. I mean, yeah, Sammy can be a little bitch—” he heard Sam blow a raspberry at him and flipped him off behind his back without looking—“but he’s my _**brother**_.” He swallowed, unable to articulate with any more accuracy what the word meant to him: friend, partner, opponent, pain-in-the-ass, competition, family, companion, child, responsibility, conscience, confidant…Sammy was all those things and more, and how could one word signify so much? How could it not? “How could you do that to him?”

He felt a pressure at his side and looked down. Sammy leaned against him, looking very young. He put his arm around him and drew his brother in, feeling just as vulnerable, but not wanting to appear weak. 

Cain spoke then, very low, almost mumbling to himself. He was looking at Abel. “I don’t mean to do it, you know,” he said very softly. “And it would be different if....” He huffed a half-laugh. “Quite recently, in fact, someone else—something else—killed him. And he didn’t come back. And it was…awful.” Cain removed his glasses and produced a handkerchief. He wiped them fastidiously and placed them back on his nose, then folded the hankie and put it back in his trouser pocket. When he spoke next, his voice was steady again. “So, Dean, you see, I do want him around. And I also want to kill him. And that, I believe, is quite enough of a mystery for you to take with you.”

Dean held Cain’s gaze and neither smiled. Then Dean said: “Come on, Sammy, we’re going. Where’s your hat?”

Sam broke away to retrieve the ball cap. Dean backed up a step, aiming for the door. Abel had his head in his hands, but he said, “You mustn’t go alone,” which Dean ignored. 

Goldie flapped his wings and hovered in front of Dean, waving his little hands. “Meep!”

The bell rang and Abel jumped up. His bruises had healed completely, and his lip was already scabbing over. “I’ll get it!” he announced unnecessarily.

There was a flapping sound and Abel appeared a moment later with a black bird. The bird flew right to the table and picked up a worm from the plate. “Mmf,” it said as the gelatin got caught in its beak. “I don’t care what anyone says, they’re still better than real ones.” The bird cocked its head at Dean and Sam, who were still standing in the middle of the sitting area. “These the travelers?” the bird asked.

“Y-y-yes,” Abel said brightly. “Dean, Sam, this is Matthew.”

Dean tried to smile, but had a feeling it looked more like he was in pain. “Great. First a scarecrow, now a crow?”

“Raven,” Sam and Matthew said at the same time. “Hey, nice goin’, kid,” Matthew continued.

Dean wanted to tell Sam what a freak he was, but in light of what had just happened with Cain and Abel, he bit back the comment. Later, when he wasn’t half so creeped out by meeting a jack-o-lantern with legs and lung cancer and two characters out of the honest-to-fucking-God-Bible and now a goddamned-talking-raven, for crissakes, he’d find a way to remind Sam that geekdom was not a badge of honor.

“Matthew will take you to the castle,” Cain said, all trace of his ire vanished.

“Lemme guess, so we can ask the wizard to go home?” Dean countered, shaking his head. He rubbed his forehead, where suddenly there seemed to be unusual pressure. “Look, no offense, but if we’re just going to click our heels anyway, can’t we do it here, without the questing all over the place and poppy fields and flying monkeys?”

“Heh,” the raven said, smacking its beak. “I hated that movie, too, kid. Believe me, I feel your pain.”

“Wanna bet?” Dean said quickly. “Let’s go, Sam.”

“I wouldn’t advise it,” Cain called to his back. “It’s not at all wise to wander about the Dreaming without a guide.”

“Who said anything about wandering? We just want to go home now. Please,” Dean added, not to beg, but just for emphatic politeness.

“Yeah, if I were you, I’d feel the same way. Heck, I did feel the same way, when I got here,” the raven said. He flapped one wing ineffectually. “Trouble is, I was dead. So not a lot of choice there for me. Trust me, kid, we’re working on getting you out of here.”

“So we _do_ have to go see the wizard?” Sam asked. “Does Dean have to dance? ’Cause I would so pay to see that.”

“Hey, I have an idea: let’s make Sammy wear ruby pumps.” Dean bugged his eyes out at Sam. It felt good, maybe even normal, again. Considering.

“No one’s singing, and no one’s cross-dressing,” Matthew the raven said. “But yeah, we do kinda have to go see someone. Lucien’s looking for a portal for you. Come on.” He hopped off the table and flapped to get airborne. He flew around the room once while Goldie flew to the door to open it for them.

Matthew sailed out into the yard, where he flapped in a circle while Dean, Sam, Abel, Cain, and Goldie all followed him.

“Thanks for the cookies,” Sam said to Abel. “And seriously, do yourself a favor, take some kickboxing or something.”

“Wasting daylight!” Matthew cawed. “Do you want to get home this century or not?”

“Remember your mystery, Dean!” Cain called as they hurried down the hillside, following the raven, and Dean wondered what kind of life it was when catching up to a raven was a welcome task.

~*~*~*~

“So, who’s this Lucien guy?” Dean asked Matthew about half an hour later. At least, it felt like half an hour, but the sky was getting darker and little stars were starting to shine above. 

“Well, he’s…a librarian,” Matthew said. “And apparently he was a raven, but he won’t really talk about that. It’s kinda confusing.”

“And…you’re really dead?”

“Yup. Dead as last year’s Christmas tree.”

“Huh,” Dean said. “Usually, my Dad makes sure that things that are dead stay dead.”

“Well, aren’t you a ray of sunshine?” Matthew asked. “I’m dead in your world. Here I’m…well, I’m His raven.”

“Whose raven?” Sam asked.

“I was Morpheus’s raven,” Matthew said slowly, as if thinking it out for the first time. “But…he, well, he died. So now…I guess you could say I’m breaking in his replacement.”

They saw the castle long before they reached it, but again, the landscape did that weird trick thing that was really creeping Dean out, and they got to the gates sooner than he figured they should have. The three creatures at the gates greeted Matthew and let them in. Sam paused to gawk.

“Come on, Sam!” Dean snarled. Yeah, a wyvern, a griffin, and a hippogriff were cool—not exactly on display at the average zoo—but Dean was getting tired of the adventure. He just wanted to go home. He yanked on Sam’s t-shirt to pull him inside.

“Guys, this is really important: Stay with me,” Matthew told them. “Don’t wander off. I mean it.”

“Got it,” they both said in unison.

Matthew led them through a maze of corridors and sights. Dean kept a firm hand on Sam’s shoulder, which Sam shrugged off amid protests of, “I’m not stupid, Dean!” and “Dean, gimme a break!” But Dean kept grabbing his brother, and he couldn’t have said whether it was really for Sam’s protection, or because he himself couldn’t quite resist some of the visions in the walls and needed the anchor of his responsibility for Sam to keep him from straying. 

At length, they came to a set of double-doors many storeys tall. Matthew called out, “Hey, Lucien! Open up!” as they approached, and a smaller portal opened at the bottom of the massive door on the right. It reminded Dean of a doggie flap, except that it was human-sized.

Sam muttered to Dean as they walked through the door, “Medieval castles used to have these smaller doors in their main gates. They were called salley ports….” his voice dropped away as they crossed the threshold and he gazed at the cavernous stacks of books. Dean didn’t even bother to tell him what a geek he was.

“Uh, Matthew? We may have a problem,” Dean commented.

“What?” The bird wheeled around in a wide arc, instantly worried.

Dean shook his head solemnly. “You’ve brought my walking brainiac of a brother to the one place he’s never gonna want to leave.”

~*~*~*~

Lucien looked like he _could_ have been a raven in a former life. He was tall, thin as a reed, and his hair did the same kind of wing thing that Cain’s hair did. Dean thought of it as “Wolverine” hair. The librarian was meticulously attired in a frock coat and striped trousers. He wore pinz-nez glasses (and Dean congratulated himself on not needing Sam for that bit of trivia) and Dean expected him to have a British accent like on _Mystery_. He wasn’t disappointed.

“Oh, yes,” Lucien was saying patiently to Sam’s catechism. “The library has an extensive section on the occult. I’m particularly fond of Buckland’s _Uncovered Acts._ It’s quite amusing, though…perhaps not appropriate for one so young,” he amended quickly, blushing.

“Might I suggest a rather interesting edition of Kipling? That’s bound to hold your interest better. Third row, fifty-seventh shelf, near this end. It’s the third volume of _Puck of Pook's Hill_ , which was followed of course by _Rewards and Fairies._ ”

Sam regarded Lucien with skepticism. “Kipling only wrote one sequel to _Puck of Pook’s Hill_ ,” he announced to Dean’s delight. Kipling was one of the few authors he actually liked. He and Sam had spent a whole year ripping through every Kipling story or novel they could find—from school and public libraries, even a couple used bookshops—and whenever they had had access to a VCR, tracking down all the film versions through grocery store video rentals. 

“More’s the pity,” Lucien told Sam gravely. “It would have been a masterpiece.” He waved them both over to a high writing desk with a long-legged chair in front of it. On the canted surface, a large book lay open. “Now, all this persiflage aside, you are not here to explore the library. No. You are here so we may discover how to put you back where you belong. Preferably before the master discovers there’s a problem,” he added under his breath. “I’ve been doing a little reading—”

Dean snorted. He couldn’t help it. Sam elbowed him in the ribs.

“—And my best guess is that you stumbled through a Soft Place.”

“What’s a Soft Place?” Sam asked, repeating the proper nouns.

“Well,” Lucien said, removing his pinz-nez and twisting in his perch to lean down toward Sam. “Imagine that all the places that have ever been, and will ever be, are connected by roads. Like continents connected by an isthmus, or archipelagoes close enough that one may simply step from one island to the next, yes?”

Sam nodded. Dean shrugged. He was tired of twenty questions, didn’t really care _why_ they were here, or _how_ they’d got here, so long as they could get back. The sooner, the better.

“Well, sometimes these land bridges are very solid, but sometimes they can be like the path through a marsh, with ever-shifting density and levels of buoyancy.”

“You mean, like, sometimes a riverbank is pretty solid packed earth, and sometimes it’s sandy.”

“Precisely. The Soft Places form when the shifts between realities are, well, soft. They open up, which makes it easier for mortals like yourselves to slide through.”

“So…we’re actually on another world? Another planet?” Sam asked, eyes round and excited.

“Dear me, no,” Lucien told him hastily. “You’re very much still in the same world. You are merely in another plane.”

As Dean watched Lucien and Sam’s conversation, both their words and the visions they had seen finally sank in, and it occurred to him that he knew what plane Lucien might mean. He looked around the gigantic chamber again, thought about Mervyn, Cain, and Abel….

“Gates of horn and ivory,” he said suddenly, remembering intermittent months with Pastor Jim and how he had taught him Latin. “Wait a minute…horn for true dreams and ivory for false…. The entrance to Elysium.”

Lucien’s eyes glittered and he replaced his glasses. “Ah, you know your _Aeneid_. Can you tell, then, where you are?”

“Hang on,” Dean muttered, biting his lip in thought. “Matthew said he belonged to Morpheus. No way!” he shouted in triumph. “We’ve been dreaming?” He waved a hand between himself and Sam. “How can we have the same dream?”

Lucien chuckled. “Because you are not asleep, young man. You are in the Dreaming, but you are both awake. An unusual enough occurrence, though not unheard of.”

“So we came here through a Soft Place?” Sam asked. “To the Dreaming?”

“I believe so, yes,” Lucien said. 

“So…then all these books. Kipling—those are books that were never written?”

“Correct, Sam, very well done. This is the Library of Dreams. Here are all the books that were never begun, or dreamed but never finished, or never even conceived, except in the deepest recesses of their creators’ minds.” Lucien spread his arms to encompass the whole hall and his voice grew somewhat wistful.

“Uh…” Dean cleared his throat. “That’s great, and Sam, now that you know, you can come on back sometime when you’re actually asleep. What about the part where we go home?” he asked, getting faster and louder as he reached his point.

Lucien’s face drooped. “Ah. Well, as to that…I’m not sure which Soft Place you came through. I’ve been going over the records—”

“The Dreaming has records?”

“Of course,” Lucien said, blinking. “Maps are…unreliable. Ours is a highly fungible kingdom. But records…these we can keep with some confidence. In any event, the records indicate that there are currently no Soft Places in the North American prairies.”

“There weren’t,” a new voice said, “and then there were. And soon, there won’t be again,” it continued. Sam and Dean turned—Dean a little embarrassed that someone had snuck up on them effectively—to see a cocky, cool guy approaching. He looked like something straight out of the 50’s: motorcycle boots, tight jeans, a white tank-top under a leather jacket, and between his upturned collar and his blond pompadour, a glistening pair of black Ray-bans.

“Well, hel-lo,” he said to Dean, adjusting his sunglasses up the bridge of his nose. “What have we here?”

Lucien slid off his chair too swiftly and caught himself on his lectern. “Guests, Corinthian,” he said tersely.

Dean’s hackles rose. He could feel, though he couldn’t see, this Cory dude rake his eyes up and down both Dean and his brother. Suddenly his anxiety about the harmless Abel seemed utterly laughable. If he’d ever had doubts about what being ogled felt like, he knew he had a frame of reference forever. This guy may have looked cooler than James Dean, Billy Idol, and Arthur Fonzarelli all rolled into one, but he was one serious creep.

“Hey, Corinthian!” Matthew cawed in greeting, sailing back in from the stacks where he’d gotten lost earlier. “What brings you to this neck of the woods?”

“Looking for the Lord Shaper,” the Corinthian answered, never breaking his gaze from Dean and Sam next to him. “Lucien, you were talking about the Soft Place? It’s taken care of.”

“Oh, dear,” Lucien said. “By taken care of, you mean it’s been closed?”

The Corinthian nodded. “There was dream sand powering it. Not to mention a little nightmare using the sand to stir up some unusual storms. Took me longer than I expected to find it all. It must have escaped in the transfer,” he concluded, and he flicked his head toward Matthew.

“Don’t look at me,” Matthew defended himself. “That bag was closed when he gave it to me.”

“Not blaming you, Matt. If anything, I’m grateful for the excuse to travel. Gave me a chance to have a look around out there. Anyway, it should be closing up on its own now.” He took a step forward. “Do our guests have names?” he asked, half a smile playing across his lips.

“I’m Sam,” Sam volunteered. Dean fumed and stepped on his foot with a glare. “Ow! What?”

“Nice to meet you, Sam,” the Corinthian said and took another step. 

Dean moved in front of him. “Leave him alone,” he said, making his voice as menacing as he could. 

The Corinthian chuckled. “Just being friendly. You’re guests, after all.” He emphasized the word in a way that made Dean feel very uneasy. Sam slapped his arm and bugged his eyes out at him as if to ask what his problem was.

“That’s correct,” Lucien said officiously. “And we’ve been trying to find a way to conduct our guests back home. Am I right in thinking that you could find your way back to the passage before it shuts?”

“Might could do,” the Corinthian said with an artful shrug. “You asking me to take them back to the Waking World?”

“Not alone,” Lucien said. Dean whipped his head around, because Lucien’s tone was suddenly much changed from the diffident, whimsical librarian. Lucien had drawn himself up to his full height and had an air of business-like authority. “Matthew? Are you willing to accompany them?”

Matthew landed on Lucien’s desk. “Well, sure, but…what’m I gonna do if he… you know…?” he whispered to Lucien.

“I’m offended, birdie,” said the Corinthian. “I know how to honor guestright.”

“Yes, but will you?” Lucien asked pointedly. “Not to…offend you, but you have strayed before.”

“That version was imperfect,” the Corinthian countered. “I have been recreated.”

“And do you wish to be uncreated again?” Lucien said. “If not, I advise you to keep yourself civil.” He turned to Dean and Sam. “Go with him and Matthew. If that portal is solidifying, you soon may not be able to get back. It’s all right.”

But Dean knew better than to know that things were all right just because adults said they were. “Why can’t you take us?” he asked.

Lucien’s jaw twitched. “For a variety of reasons, Dean. But he will give you safe conduct.” He looked over Dean’s shoulder to the Corinthian. “Or he will suffer the consequences.”

The Corinthian shrugged. “No sweat, kids. I’ll take you home real pretty.” He turned on his heel and began to walk out of the library. “Coming?” he asked over his shoulder.

“Dean? Don’t you want to go home?” Sam asked, trotting after the Corinthian. Dean caught up quickly. “What’s up, Dean? He seems like just the kind of guy you’d like, back home,” Sam commented a little while later.

“Yeah, seems like,” Dean acknowledged. “Just…watch yourself, Sammy.”

They walked out of the castle and the Corinthian took them down a path toward a beach. “Just curious about something,” he asked. “Whose guestright did you invoke?”

“Huh?” Dean asked.

“We met Abel and Cain,” Sam said. Despite Dean’s warning, he skipped ahead a little to walk beside the Corinthian. “And Goldie. They gave us tea. And cookies. And gummi worms. D’you like gummi worms?”

“Don’t think I’ve ever had one,” the Corinthian replied.

“Oh.” Sam thought about that. “What’s your job?”

“Job?”

“Yeah. I mean, Mervyn is a…janitor, I guess, and Lucien’s a librarian. What do you do?”

The Corinthian walked in silence for a bit. “I suppose I’m a free agent,” he decided.

Dean lengthened his stride to come even with Sam. “Sammy, don’t talk to him.”

“Dean, Dean, Dean,” the Corinthian said reproachfully. “It’s a good thing I like kids, or I might get a little…upset.”

Dean took Sam’s arm to jerk him away. “Quit it, Dean!” Sam whined and disengaged himself. “Stop worrying. He’s cool. Aren’t you?” he asked, looking up at the tall blond.

“Totally, dude,” the Corinthian assured them.

He walked them along the shoreline. As they traveled, the beach turned to rocks, the water began to resemble long stalks of barley, and the sand on which they walked began to harden. “We’re taking the short cut,” the Corinthian announced. 

He brought them up a rise and Sam pointed. “Hey, that’s the fence!”

“Sure is.” He turned and grinned at Matthew. “See, birdie? I followed orders like a good little soldier. You can go and report to Lucien that all is well.”

“Are we through the Soft Place?” Matthew asked.

“Not quite,” he admitted. “It’s just over this hill.”

“Walk us out, then,” Dean insisted.

“Jeez, your Mommy teach you any manners?” the Corinthian quipped. “What happened to ‘Please?’”

“Our mom’s dead,” Sam said quietly.

The Corinthian’s mouth tightened. “That a fact?” He put a steady hand on Sam’s shoulder.

“I said don’t touch him!” Dean shouted. He forced himself forward and slapped the Corinthian’s hand away.

The Corinthian smiled and Dean suppressed a shiver. “Oh, kid. I’m so glad you did that.”

“Aw, shit,” Matthew said, and disappeared. Dean fought the sting of betrayal. They were about to get their asses kicked…or worse…by some kind of freak dream-creature, and their only ally just went “poof.”

“See, we’re still in the Dreaming. But I didn’t give you _my_ hospitality. And you’ve attacked a servant of the Dream Lord’s, on official business.” He reached into his pocket, lightning-quick, and pulled out a knife, which he unfolded with a small clicking sound.

“You just renounced guestright.”


	6. Chapter 6

John rolled the bracelet between his thumb and forefinger, feeling it flip over itself as it twisted down to the knuckle, then back up to the pad of his thumb. Caleb had gotten him back to the house, but since then John had been sitting, staring at the slender circlet and trying to plan his next move. Caleb worried that John might be in some kind of shock.

“Must have been…fall of ’89?” John said softly, whether to himself or Caleb, Caleb didn’t know. He was still absently twirling the wristband up and down the length of his thumb. “Dean was in 6th grade. We were staying in Cookeville, Tennessee. And he came home…. He still cared about what the other kids were doing back then…that’s…that’s changed,” he shook his head in disbelief, “oh, probably in the last two years?” He sniffed against his infuriating nasal drip and Caleb flicked the box of tissues closer to him. John ignored the box and looked up at Caleb without seeing him. “He came home,” he continued, looking back down at the bracelet, “and all he wanted to do was find a pack of these stupid things.” 

He hooked both thumbs through the circle and alternated between stretching and folding it. His eyes found Caleb’s. “You know Dean—he barely ever wants anything for himself. Boy was so distracted he couldn’t shoot straight. So I said okay.” John let out an exhale that was part laugh, part huff. “Dragged me and his brother out to the goddamned mall.

“The damn things came in packs of three. But for whatever reason, I dunno, because those kids in his class had decided that was too easy, it was only cool to wear two. You know how dumb kids are about that kind of thing. So he gave the extra one to Sam.” John drew a deep breath, went back to playing with the bracelet with one hand while his other one cupped his forehead. “And now he’s used it like a goddamn single breadcrumb.” He leaned forward to point an accusing finger at Caleb. His voice took on the strength of anger. “You let them go out, with that thing closing in on the area.”

Some of John’s other contacts—friends—might have risen to the bait, but Caleb just sighed. “John, you know that’s not gonna work on me, so don’t pick a fight with me just because you want to kill something. Look. I’ll take responsibility for letting them go out, but honestly? They’re boys. They _should_ be out on a summer day. Everything was fine this afternoon. There was no call to worry. They’ve been out…dozens of times. This visit, the one three years ago…. They know the area. And I still say Dean isn’t dumb enough to have gotten in a stranger’s car.”

John held up the bracelet like a fetish. “Explain this, then,” he insisted.

“John…I hate to say it, but it’s just a vinyl tube. It could be anyone’s.” Caleb tried to reason with him. But even he sounded like he knew better.

“You know any other kids in your neighborhood who wear black jelly bands like this?” John fired back.

A muscle worked in Caleb’s jaw. “No,” he admitted, pressing his lips together.

“Then let’s just assume for the moment that Dean deliberately left it there. Why?” John asked, and if he was pissed at Caleb, Caleb could take that, because at least it meant John was getting his head out of abject terror for his kids and starting to work the case like any other. So Caleb thought out loud right along with him.

“Maybe they did leave the road,” he suggested. “Dean put it there to know where they’d turned away.” It made the most sense, though he couldn’t think why they’d traipse across the farmland.

“Maybe,” John conceded. He sniffed again, grabbed a tissue in frustration, and blew his nose loudly. “Gah,” was his only comment, but it was infused with disgust. “What’s in that field?”

Caleb snorted. “Soybeans. Or nothing. Hank Denton’s been paid for years _not_ to use his land.”

John honked his nose again and grunted. “What about the road? Traffic?”

“John, when I was in high school, I made a bet with my buddies. I bet them we could park a sofa right across Havelock at nine AM and sit our asses down on it, and not have to move for anyone until at least five.” He stood up to check the driveway, like he’d been doing about every five minutes since they got back. “When I say this place is quiet, I mean it’s quiet.”

“What about weather activity? You said you told them to find shelter if there was a storm, right?” John asked.

“Yeah,” Caleb confirmed, “but it was clear all afternoon. John, I don’t know,” he admitted miserably, crossing back to the couch. “Maybe we missed something. Maybe one of them had to piss, they cut across the field for privacy, and Hank caught them trespassing. Maybe they got hot and went up to Doris’s place for lemonade. Let me go back out, ask the neighbors if they’ve seen them.”

Any other parent would have seized on this solution first, in Caleb’s estimation. It said something about how isolated John Winchester had made himself that he actually had to think it over. Hell, when that Kaylee Roberts kid had gone missing last year, didn’t they organize a goddamn search party? But John shook his head slowly. “No. No, if that’s all it was, they’d have come back. Or called,” he added, thinking about his boys getting themselves hauled into town by a country sheriff. “No, they’re out there. But maybe we did miss something.” He stood up.

“Okay, we’ll walk the circuit again.” Caleb moved to join him.

“No, that’s okay. You stay here, in case they make it back. I’ll…I’d like to look on my own.” There was no accusation, only a desperate grasp at hope.

“Drive, then—I don’t like the idea of you walking another three miles, the shape you’re in.”

John conceded the necessity only after making his way off the porch. He climbed into the Impala and turned it in the yard, headlights shining against the coming night.

~*~*~*~

Dean tried fiercely to remember Dad’s lessons about fighting unarmed against a man with a knife. He put himself between the Corinthian and Sam, who for his part had skittered back from the sudden change in the Corinthian’s demeanor. Both of them took up a defensive stance. 

“What are the odds?” the Corinthian taunted them. “Two ripe young things like yourselves just dropping into my lap, here in the Dreaming? You know, I’ve been out there for a few days. But haven’t had anything half as sweet as you look, Dean. Those green eyes… green ones taste the best, you know. And brothers…?” He sucked in a breath through his teeth. “The things your eyes have seen? I bet you two are just delicious.”

“Never gonna find out, you fucker,” Dean spat.

“Let’s just test that, shall we?” the Corinthian said, and lunged forward. Dean sidestepped the knife, shouting for Sam to get out of the way. The Corinthian spun on the balls of his feet and kicked out at Dean’s leg. Dean, still turning, was caught by the side of the Corinthian’s boot. The impact sent him sprawling. The Corinthian towered over him, drawing back for another kick, but Sam suddenly appeared behind him and slammed his clasped hands into the spot where the nightmare’s kidneys should have been. The Corinthian whirled again, but Sam had already danced away.

“Run, Sam!” Dean shouted. “Get over the hill!” He found his footing, squaring off again. 

Sam ran, but the Corinthian went after him. He caught Sam’s shirt and dragged him back. Sam struggled wildly to the Corinthian’s laughter.

“I usually don’t have to catch my prey,” he said. “This is refreshing.”

“Let him go!” Dean screamed. He ran toward them, but the Corinthian twisted Sam in his grip and held his knife to Sam’s throat. Sam’s hands flew up to his forearm, scratching ineffectually.

“Now, Dean,” he said calmly, “Think about this. You’re on my turf, buddy-boy. Think I’m one scary son of a bitch now? Wait and see what happens if I get really angry. Is that what you want?” He shook Sam, who struggled harder.

“No!” Dean said. “No, no, no…. Okay, okay,” he continued, holding up his hands. “Okay. Just...don’t hurt him.”

“Tell him to stop fighting me,” the Corinthian ordered. Dean nodded to Sam. Sam’s kicks and scratches subsided. The Corinthian smiled, all predator. He loosened his grip. “Good call, Dean,” he said. “Now, come over here next to your brother.”

Dean walked forward steadily, eyes on Sam’s. He willed his brother to remember their drills, the signals they had worked out with Dad, ways to communicate non-verbally. His fingers twitched as he thought through the exercises. 

The Corinthian released Sam and squared off against them both, knife still brandished in front of him. “Very good,” he commented when Dean joined Sam. “Now, let’s play.”

“Matthew went to get help,” Sam said confidently. “Lucien said you had to behave.”

“Yeah, he did. Know what?” the Corinthian sneered. “I don’t take orders from trumped up carrion.”

“You’re not allowed to hurt us!” Sam insisted.

The Corinthian crouched in front of him. With extreme cockiness, he taunted: “What are you going to do about it?”

Dean bent his knees, preparing for Sam’s reaction. For a moment, he thought maybe he’d miscalculated, because Sam just glared at the Corinthian. Then Sam punched out with a massive left hook, far more powerful than an eleven-year-old should have been able to throw, thanks to Dad’s constant instruction. His fist connected just below the Corinthian’s right temple, tossing his head to the side. His sunglasses flew off his face, skittering across the hard-packed asphalt road.

Dean reached out just as Sam connected, and plucked the knife from the Corinthian’s slack palm. Sam howled in pain, shaking his hand. His knuckles were bloody, and the blood was his own.

“Corinthian!” a gravelly voice shouted behind them. Dean backed away, calling for Sam as he scuttled backward. The Corinthian snapped his neck around. Dean shrank back in horror at the sight of his face, with teeth instead of eyes.

Cain rushed up to the three of them. “Corinthian, you are out of order!”

“This is none of your affair! Their eyes are mine!” the Corinthian’s eyes said. Dean’s jaw dropped a bit; he heard Sam cut off his hisses of pain and say “Ew,” somewhat deadpan.

“They are off limits. Dean,” Cain said forcefully, “do you remember your mystery?”

Dean pointed the knife at the Corinthian. “No one gets to kill my brother except me.” 

Cain nodded and said, “Bright lad” proudly, and for a moment, Dean saw his father’s approving gaze when he’d accomplished a particularly challenging task. Cain put his arms protectively around both boys. To the Corinthian he said: “Do you wish for His Lordship to bring us to the brink of war again, so soon?”

“War? Nonsense,” the eyes scoffed.

“War.” Cain touched Sam’s head. “They are already marked for something else. They cannot be yours, and if you press, you will have me to face. And our Lord.” Cain stepped forward. Although he was shorter than the Corinthian, he seemed to loom over him. “You’ve been taking liberties, haven’t you? Out in the Waking World?”

The Corinthian had the grace to look sheepish. “My errand took longer than I anticipated. I had to amuse myself somehow,” he explained with his regular mouth, Dean was relieved to see.

“Matthew, take them out,” Cain said. Dean looked over; he hadn’t noticed the raven return, but he was perched on the fence behind them.

Matthew swooped down to the Corinthian’s sunglasses. He picked them up in his beak and dropped them into the Corinthian’s hand when he outstretched it. “You’re coming with us. Finish the task you were assigned, or I swear, I’ll make sure that He knows how bad you fucked this up.”

~*~*~*~

John crawled along in the Impala, peering through the barbed wire in the dim evening for any glimpse of movement. Twice he got out for a closer look, only to identify the shape in the distance as a scarecrow, not his boys. He drove the circuit once with no luck. When he arrived back at Caleb’s, he reluctantly agreed to let the arms-dealer call the police. “Let me talk to Sadie at the station house, anyway,” Caleb said. “See if they have any information, before we actually call them in missing.”

“I’m going around again,” John said. Caleb didn’t stop him. He knew John had to be doing something, couldn’t just sit around and wait.

On his third circle, John turned on to Havelock and saw two little shapes, glowing in the Impala’s headlights, off on the shoulder. He sped up to reach the spot and pulled over in front of them. Dean and Sam, their t-shirts, ball caps, and running shorts all a little dusty, sat leaning against one another and a fencepost, eyes closed. Their bare legs looked white in the night, but tan compared to their gym socks and scuffed sneakers. Sam’s shoelace was untied, John noticed, and thought how ridiculous it was to care about that detail at that moment.

“Dean! Sammy!” he shouted, running up to them. His hands moved on their own, searching everywhere on their bodies for signs of injury or assault. “Dean!” He grabbed Dean’s head, pulled it toward him. He rubbed his thumb across Dean’s jaw. “Dean, wake up. Please, son,” he said. His hands moved to Dean’s shoulders and shook him lightly. Dean groaned. John hugged Sammy to his chest. “Sammy! Sammy, are you all right?” he asked, frantic now that he had them back.

“Dad?” Sam murmured. “S’wet,” he said.

“What is, what’s wet…are you bleeding?” John demanded, lifting Sam to check his back, behind his neck. 

“No…grass is wet, Dad,” Sam blinked and opened his eyes. “Dad? Why’re we in the road?”

John breathed deeply in relief, which set him to coughing. Sammy asked if he was okay, to which John nodded and caught his breath. “Dean?” he asked, shaking his eldest’s shoulder again. “Dean, wake up!”

“Wha…?” Dean waved his arms to brush his father’s hands away. “Dad?” he said when he opened his eyes. “Dad! Why’s it so dark?”

“What the hell, Dean?” John said angrily, as soon as he was satisfied they were both safe. “Where have you _been_?”

Dean and Sam exchanged a confused, but vaguely guilty glance. “I…we’re not sure, Sir,” Dean said after a moment.

“Okay, both of you, in the car, now,” John ordered. His relief at finding them whole and unharmed was beginning to be supplanted by a suspicion that they’d gone AWOL for some misguided idea of a joke, and caused him a lot of worry and fear for no good reason. 

As they all stood up, John saw something that made him think his fever was running higher than he estimated. A man-- _the_ man he’d been looking for, stood behind the Impala. A raven was perched on his shoulder. 

“Son of a—” John snarled and reached in his waistband for his gun. But by the time he drew down, the vision had cleared, and the road was empty. Just as the mirage dissipated, the raven bobbed its head and the maniac raised a hand toward the boys. Somehow, John knew it wasn’t greeting. It was…farewell. Dean and Sam came up on either side of him.

“Dad?” Dean asked with concern. John blinked hard and stowed the firearm.

“In the car,” John repeated. “I expect a full report, but we’ll sort it out at Caleb’s.”

Minutes later, they were back. After expressing his relief and astonishment, Caleb called Sadie to let her know the kids had been found and cancel the dispatch request. John, meanwhile, sat down in the La-Z-Boy with Dean and Sam at parade rest in front of him.

“Now, where the hell did you get to?” he asked. “And don’t even think about lying, Dean. I’ve been out of my mind looking for you. Caleb even called the cops. You get me?”

Dean cleared his throat. “Yes, Sir, I do. But….” He looked at Sam.

“But what?” John demanded.

“It’s just…I’m not sure I remember,” he answered in distress. “You, Sam?”

“We went running. And then the road did something funny.”

“Yeah. And we went up the hill.”

“What hill?” John asked with a look at Caleb, who shrugged. 

“There aren’t any hills around here. Unless you call the upside of an irrigation ditch a hill.”

“There _was_ a hill, though,” Sam insisted. “And we thought it was weird, didn’t we, Dean?” He looked at his brother, who nodded. “But we couldn’t get back here on the road.”

“You’re right,” Dean said, as if remembering it for the first time himself. “The road kept coming back to the same spot. So we left it.” His hand went to his right wrist to rub the single bracelet. Seeing this, John pulled the other band out of his pocket and handed it over. “Thanks. Well, then…we met a bunch of people. Not like regular people…. They said we’d gone through a…a Soft Place.”

John’s eye twitched. “A Soft Place?” he repeated. The term seemed so familiar and he couldn’t think why. “So, no one took you? No one tried to hurt you?”

Sam looked at Dean. He rubbed the back of his left hand, which was scraped raw, and then hid it behind his back. Dean gave Sam the tiniest headshake and they looked back at their father.

“No, Sir,” they both said together.

John knew his boys. He knew they were hiding something, just not what. Before he could call them on it, Dean said: “Look, Dad, we’re sorry you got worried. The truth is I don’t know what happened. I kinda feel like Dorothy after she bumped her head, like I’m certain that I went somewhere, but now it all kinda feels—”

“Like we dreamed it,” Sammy finished for Dean.

“Yeah,” Dean agreed. “But we’re back, and we’re okay. Punish us if you want, Dad—it’s okay. But we didn’t just go goofing off somewhere. Right, Sam?”

“Uh-huh,” Sam said, nodding.

“And we didn’t mean to get lost,” Dean added. “I just…don’t remember all the details. And I don’t know if you’d believe us if we told you.”

John rubbed his face with his hands. “You want time to get your story straight, is that it, son?”

Dean looked stung. “No, Sir. I don’t think I’d make something like this up. Would you believe me if I told you we left this dimensional plane for another one?”

John stared into his eldest’s eyes. “Actually, I might.” He sighed. After his pace the last few days, his cold, and nearly twelve hours of adrenaline-fueled alarm, he suddenly felt very tired. “I need to sleep on this,” he declared, “and decide on your punishment. Go on to bed; we’ll pick this up in the morning.”

“Yessir,” the boys chorused. They took their leave quickly.

“You believe them?” Caleb asked gravely when they were gone. 

“Hell, Caleb,” he said, steepling his fingers in front of his nose. “The shit we see? I don’t know what to think.” He flashed again on the vision of the man and his raven. Was it a premonition, like the dreams, but with his waking eye? Or was it merely a hallucination brought on by fever and fretfulness over his missing sons?

Caleb poured them much-needed drinks and then tossed John an extra blanket. “Get some sleep,” he told his friend before withdrawing. John complied eagerly.

_He stood in the great hall again. The young man with glittering black eyes, all in white, his emerald glowing against his chest, smiled sadly. “I am very sorry, John Winchester,” he said, in that voice that sounded both deep and mild. “My servants have told me what transpired, both here and in the Waking World.”_

_John’s awe was outstripped only by his confusion. “What…who are you?” he asked._

_The young man only smiled again. “I am myself, of course. And though I was not the creator of the nightmare you have been hunting, I am now its master.”_

_“You control that monster?”_

_“That is not what I said, John. I am merely its Lord. It is my vassal. It was also once my protector. I thought I could trust it. But it is, sadly, still prone to the flaws that caused its uncreation once already.”_

_“I don’t understand,” John admitted._

_“No, you do not,” the man shook his head and his shock of white hair stirred in that breeze. John smelled a dozen scents in the air disturbed by the motion: fresh coffee and pancakes; cordite and gasoline; Mary’s perfume of lavender and rosehips and Joan’s hyacinth scent; mown grass and dead leaves; Sam’s hair fresh from his bath, and Dean’s sweat after a heated sparring session. “The Corinthian is my burden, and my responsibility, John. You cannot destroy it; your hunt is at an end.”_

_John shook his head. “It’s killing—”_

_“I know,” he said, cutting him off with a raised hand. Somehow he was only a boy himself, yet also commanding and regal. “It is over. But this I tell you: I shall correct the mistake I made in underestimating his weaknesses. Look to your sons; do not treat them harshly for circumstances they could not control.”_

_The young man kissed John’s forehead lightly. For the rest of the night, he dreamed of Mary. For once, the dreams did not end in her death._

~*~*~*~

“Dean?” Sam asked after they had changed for bed and turned out the light.

“Yeah.” 

Dean felt warmth a few inches away from his body. He opened his eyes. Sam was standing beside his bed. Wordlessly, Dean pulled back the sheet and let his brother snuggle in.

“What _do_ you remember?” Sam asked once he had settled against Dean’s shoulder.

“Mm,” Dean hummed in thought. “It’s kinda fuzzy. And it’s fading out, kinda like when you wake up from a weird dream. You?” He felt Sam nod against his arm. “I remember the people…well the things, better than what happened. Was there a walking jack-o-lantern?”

“Mervyn,” Sam confirmed. “Mervyn Pumpkinhead the janitor.”

“And…Cain.” Dean twitched a little. “I think.”

“And Abel, too. And Goldie?” Sam asked. “And that library? Lucien who used to be a raven?”

“Yeah.”

“And….”

“Him. Yeah.” Dean shifted toward the wall to give them both a little more room. “It’s hot,” he said, so Sam would understand it wasn’t him.

“Was it real? Really real?”

Dean sighed. “Had to be. We both remember the same stuff. And there’s this.” He pushed Sam up, reached behind him, and pulled open the bedside table drawer. He pulled out a long penknife, folded shut. “He told me I could keep this, didn’t he? ‘You won it fair and square, kid,’ he said.” Dean turned the knife over in his hand. “And I still have it.”

“Are you gonna? Keep it, I mean?” Sam asked as Dean put the knife away and they lay back down.

“Hell, yeah,” Dean said. “Probably won’t use it, though. I don’t want to know where it’s been. But…maybe as a good luck charm.” He sighed. “Better get some sleep, Sammy. Dad’s so pissed, he’ll probably be getting us up for pre-dawn drills for the next month,” he surmised without bitterness. It was the least he’d expect after they’d caused so much trouble, however unintentionally.

“Hey, Dean!” Sam said suddenly, with the tone of having just thought of something.

“What, Sam?” Dean groaned, trying not to sound too testy.

“That guy…he was kinda like in that song you like.”

“Huh? Throw up a roadsign here, Samela, I’m lost.”

“You know,” Sam poked him in the ribs and then sang a snatch of the refrain, very quietly: “ _Harvester of ey—ey-ey-ey-eyes._ ”

Dean shuddered. The face of the Corinthian, its eye sockets full of teeth and taunting him, played against the backs of his eyelids. Man, he hoped he didn’t have nightmares about that tonight. “Thanks, Sammy,” he said with extreme sarcasm. “Now I’m never going to be able to listen to that song again.”

Sammy giggled into his shoulder. “Payback’s a bitch, Dean!” he squeaked.

“So are you,” Dean replied. But he didn’t kick him out of bed that night.


End file.
